


Sentiment and Understanding

by GammaRays



Series: Sentiment and Understanding [1]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Adult Ciel Phantomhive, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gentle Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Injury, Internal Monologue, M/M, Melancholy, Minor Character Death, POV Sebastian, Physical Abuse, Rape Recovery, and conflict and reflections - lots of them, lots of it too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 17:27:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14001006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GammaRays/pseuds/GammaRays
Summary: Ciel Phantomhive never expected to live for so long; after losing even more loved ones and abandoning his revenge, he would have welcomed death with open arms. The demon at his side never expected one mortal to intrigue him so. Neither of them understood why the contract has not been terminated on time.But everything ends at some stage, every mortal withers away. Sebastian knew it; it didn't bother him.Of course not;the boy was just one of countless, weak humans. This is what he always used to tell himself. But how foolish he was, and how long it took him to understand it.





	Sentiment and Understanding

**Author's Note:**

> Music: Black Butler OST (Ciel, Home Again, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, Si deus me relinquit, Small Wild Flower, マダム・レッドの思い出に~2リコリスの色) and Black Flies by Ben Howard.  
> That's the mood for this because it's nothing other than 24k words of angst.

Lady Elizabeth died shortly after young Master’s sixteenth birthday. It was an illness that started when her carriage got caught in a sudden snowstorm on her way back after her fiancé’s festivities. With no other choice but to walk a significant distance with her parents on foot through extreme – by human standards – weather conditions, she had been bed-ridden since that very night for several days. Countless doctors and even priests with pleas for God’s intervention have been called for, but with the Midford mansion – as well as many others – cut off due to the blizzard, help hasn’t been effectively summoned until it was too late. The illness weakened her lungs beyond saving. She passed on soon after, dying a diseased organic mess like most mortals.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen him cry so pathetically. The stench of guilt and self-hatred hung heavy in the air; he needlessly and ridiculously blamed himself as many humans do in such situations, I noticed. He shook under his covers and sobbed into the pillows loudly in the assumed privacy of his chambers which he refused to leave like a little child. Not that he had many reasons to or many people to see; the young woman’s family turned away from him and blamed him, especially her older vicious brother Edward whom I almost had to drag away, lest he physically attacked the young Master during the funeral. In public, he didn’t cry – he was the ever so stoic and strong Earl of Phantomhive. It was only back in the safety of his bed which offered no sleep that he suffered restless nights; whenever he managed to slip into a moment of much-needed slumber, he woke up screaming bloody, nightmare-fuelled murder; much like every night in the first months after I brought him back five years ago. He called for me now, again and again and I, as his loyal butler, came to him every time to ward off the night terrors.

For certain, I did not _understand_ the supposedly excruciating pain he was feeling. But even _I_ could recognise that fate has somehow taken a particular dislike towards this boy. While I did on occasion enjoy teasing my young contractor or leaving him to struggle for a while before saving him from death’s grip – yet again – I could not say I favoured the continuous grief that hung off of him like water-heavy robes, dragging him down. Especially not when such a state could potentially inhibit his progress in chasing after his desired revenge.

 

Few months later before his scars even had the chance to fully scab over – not to even mention healing – the boy lost someone else dear to him.

Mr Tanaka left peacefully in his sleep. One day, he simply didn’t wake up after old age finally claimed him in the middle of the night. Bad luck had it that it was Finny who found him and the teenager, without any inhibitions or sense of any kind, ran screaming and crying through the manor until he spotted the still-grieving earl and broke the news to him, babbling and sobbing without any sensitivity. At this stage I was quite convinced that the young Phantomhive was cursed with something else than just our contract. Or perhaps any God or guardian angel have abandoned him once he sold his soul to a hellish beast.

He didn’t cry this time. I didn’t see him shed a tear, even though his grief was almost palpable in the air, just as much when Lady Elizabeth died. Perhaps even more. _No, this time, you bottled it all up, didn’t you, my Lord? You dug your nails into your arms to give yourself some release, to keep yourself from screaming out. But the sensation was so very short-lived, and your smell shifted between grief and relief throughout the nights constantly, like some sick kind of dynamic equilibrium._ I was familiar with the concept of substituting mental anguish with physical pain, but I never _understood_ it, and not understanding infuriated me. _I wondered if you’d tell me one day_. Overcome with increasing curiosity, I began wanting to know your every thought process, to comprehend your mind better than you did yourself – _oh, you were such a fine, complex specimen_.

We buried Mr Tanaka beside young Master’s parents’ graves; to him, he was family. _Godspeed, old man_.

The manor became quieter, gloomier. While the four other servants put more effort into their worked and caused less trouble, they also laughed and smiled more rarely. Perhaps they wondered whether the apparent curse over the Phantomhive household would claim them next. Perhaps they continued to grieve the old previous butler and the young lady who would visit often and bring along her eccentric, odd type of charm. Perhaps they shared their master’s melancholy which never seemed to leave him these days.

Even though demons don’t _feel_ , I sometimes took time to wonder how the new, sombre atmosphere affected _me._ In terms of our contract, the young earl behaved contradictory to what I’ve expected; after allowing himself to grieve for a short time, he became increasingly productive. He took on case after case that the self-important royal woman threw at him, moving steadily towards his revenge and thus, towards his own damnation. This alone should have pleased me; and yet I found that I did not favour the situation as a whole at all. And I didn’t _understand why_. My curiosity continued to grow with my confusion.

 

Roughly three years after his fiancée’s death there came a breakthrough in _everything_.

The selfish old queen that my young Master favoured so much has sent her watchdog on yet another dangerous case; this particular one was of utmost urgency – several nobles and upper class individuals have been reported missing. _Disgusting, self-important slime, only really caring for those in their own yard, while preaching about equality and importance of all the people_.

It soon turned out that the case was similar to the one from a number of years ago with kidnapped children, and to the incident that ruined my young Lord’s life in the first place. Yet another group of cultists was determined to summon one of my kind with royal human sacrifices; the utter _idiocy_ of those mortal creatures never knew any end.

Finding their _lair_ wasn’t overly difficult, and because of that we underestimated them. When we barged in on one of their ceremonies it was already too late; every flat surface in sight was covered in ancient symbols and chantings that I haven’t seen in centuries, written in red paint and painted over with blood. Before I had a chance of deciphering them, I was already trapped. T _hey were certainly prepared for all kinds of possibilities._

The complex modified pentagram that I foolishly stepped on rendered me tightly shackled to my human form, helpless as any mortal with my inhuman abilities suppressed. They were on me in an instant, defeating me with their sheer number. As they beat me to the ground I caught a glimpse of my young Master being dragged away by countless hands of masked bodies towards a blood-coated stone altar. I could not believe the irony, the cruelty of the curse that put him as a cult’s sacrifice _yet again_. No matter how much I fought, I stood no chance and soon found myself suspended by a chain around my wrists from the ceiling, my feet barely touching the ground. As I watched the thin, flailing limbs being spread and tied to the cold stone, I struggled to keep my head above water; above the utter onslaught of human sensations. Air suddenly became necessary to my lungs, but _oh_ so difficult to take in through the gag in my mouth and my bleeding nose. I could feel every bruise they’ve beaten into me, the pain making my disgustingly poor human vision even weaker. Every rapid heartbeat thudded loud in my ears, deafening. But not loud enough to drown out his calling.

He called, and he called, and he called until he lost his voice. It was unbearable. I can still remember the pain of our contract seal, burning my hand and making it bleed. Soon his eye, too, began to cry crimson tears from the effort and agony of his unanswered summoning. It tore at every fibre of my weakened being, not being able to come to him as they stripped him bare and injected his veins full of a drug that with my human nose I had no chance of identifying. Then they left him like this, tending to two other corpses and carrying them out of the room. Soon, we were left alone in the eerie silence, although the screams still seemed to echo off the marked walls.

Never have I seen that boy so scared. The unrestrained terror in his eyes was overflowing in big, fat tears as he pleaded for help with his gaze, his throat surely too torn to speak. _Oh, my little fragile Lord, if you only knew how much it pained me to be unable to come to you; the memory of that time sometimes haunts me still; we didn’t speak of it, but I often wondered if you blamed me, and if so, if you have forgiven me for not keeping my promise to protect you._

Time flowed differently when I was aware of every rhythmic heartbeat and every regular breath. I didn’t know how much of it passed before the teenager’s ragged breathing evened out and his eyes closed, probably due to whatever drug he has been given. I figured that that being unconscious was better for him.

But all too soon they came back and brought every single one of his nightmares back to life while carving new ones into him. They came with knives and switches and white-hot rods. They spilled his blood which sizzled on the markings underneath him, but none of my brothers appeared – none of them would touch a human already claimed; a fact that those cultists seemed to be unaware of. The failures didn’t deter them; they humiliated and violated him in the filthiest of ways – after some time he stopped calling my name and pleading for help, knowing I will not come to his aid. Instead, with the remnants of his voice he begged me not to look, and since it was the least I could do for him, I closed my eyes and turned my face away. They tried to force me to look again, though; tearing at my clothes and whipping the bare skin of my back until it split. They gauged my left eye out, but my right remained shut tight through the sheer feeling of what humans would call _duty_ towards my Master; yet this term is too simplistic. There is no sufficient human expression that would effectively describe a demon’s sense of loyalty to his contractor and the agreements that bind them together. So even though the pain was excruciating and I’ve lost consciousness on multiple occasions, I haven’t opened my remaining eye, not once when they forced themselves on him.

In the brief, quiet moments when they left us alone – quite often after my Master passed out – I tried to collect my thoughts and make sense of them. I’ve never been stripped of my nature in such a way before, but now that I was experiencing what it felt like to be human, _genuinely_ , I couldn’t stop my view of this species from shifting. I knew that _I_ could heal; even if this mortal façade was to be torn apart and left to rot, I’d still be tied to its pieces until the seal that bound me would be broken and I would be released, intact and unaffected – just irritated and bored. My body would come back and stitch itself together, should I wish to keep the same human form. My eye would grow back. And yet I felt something akin to unease whenever those fiends reappeared, when I thought of all the new creative methods of administering pain they came up with. But humans? My young Lord? Should they have cut off his tongue, he would never be able to speak again. Branding him with a burning iron would leave his skin marred forever. And, perhaps, should they have hurt his mind sufficiently, there would come a point when he just won’t come back anymore. And yet he _always_ feigned such bravery, all those years, as if neither such monsters nor death could touch him. Despite all the agony he went through in his short life, he moved forward. I would be a liar if I had said that such a feat did not call for at least some level of admiration and respect. Not when I experienced first hand the type of physical pain he felt. Not when I thought back to him purposely inflicting injury to such a fragile, sensitive body in order to escape the mental pain. _My Lord, if anguish of the mind is so much worse than that of the body, how could you still stand on your two small feet if such agony tormented you constantly?_ Perhaps my comprehension was limited, judgement clouded by tortures, but in that dark room as I hung by the stone altar, I bowed _genuinely_ to my young unconscious Master, who now became much more than just a human weakling; he became something respectable and _valid_ , someone even _more_ deserving of protection from such suffering.

I couldn’t tell how long we’ve been there; it could have been days or weeks. For the first time in my existence, I experienced human thirst and hunger – it was maddening, along with a handful of other ailments that plagued me; my face itched with the infection that was surely eating away at my empty eye socket; my entire body was sore and aching, not having been let down from this suspension once. One upside of this was that I’ve spend a lot of my time unconscious. My Master was untied sporadically, only so that they could turn him over and abuse fresh patches of flesh. Sometimes they fed him or let him drink, obviously not intending to let him die – at least not yet. He never spoke or cried or made any noise anymore. I started to worry that they really have cut off his tongue.

Finally, the number of corpses they produced attracted a Shinigami for soul collection. Fate had it that it was no other than Grell Sutcliff. Though for once I thought such coincidence to be a stoke of luck; my hopes were that the eccentric redhead would be easier to manipulate and win over than, say, his dark-haired superior. And yet, it was one of those ‘quiet times’ when he came, the unnerving sound of his whirring scythe echoing and arriving before him, making my insides twist strangely. In this state, I was helpless. Should he decide to cut me in half, there would have been nothing I could do.

And surely enough, the clank of his heels against the tiled floor grew louder in my ears, as did the noise of his weapon, until he stopped right in front of me. His red-and-black shoes swam in front of my single eye. ‘Ohh, _Sebas-chan_ , what a lovely surprise to see you here. This must be _fate_ , don’t you think? Though you aren’t looking your best, I admit.’ The edge of his vicious scythe came into my field of view, forcing my head up and back so that he wouldn’t tear me apart with it. It was difficult to keep my head upright, but the moving metal just an inch under my chin was enough of an incentive. The reaper winced in distaste upon seeing my surely disgusting and marred mess of a face. ‘Oh, you’ve definitely had better days, indeed. Ahh, but no matter; look at you, all tied up and half naked… A girl can barely help herself!’ His fingers stroking down my chest felt like barbed wire over my frayed and oversensitive skin, making me hiss.

‘G-Grell-’

‘Ah ah ah, hush hush! I finally have you where I want you- Oh, the things I could do to you right now! Though I admit, it isn’t as fun when you can’t struggle… What got you in such a state anyway, darling?’ He put his finger to his chin, as if deep in thought.

‘S… The seal, u-underneath. Has me b-bound.’ I hated myself for being so _weak_ ; and in front of _him,_ of all people.

He glanced down and his face lit up with delight. ‘Ohh, such oldie but goodie, apparently! Ah, but this is no good…’ The reaper stepped away, and suddenly I felt unbearably ill when I saw him approach my motionless Master, the scythe roaring above his bloodied chest. ‘Should I roughen up your toy a little to liven you up?’

Desperately, I wrecked my mind for some reasonable and logical argument or even a distraction. ‘N-no! You- It’s not his time y-yet! You can’t take him if-’ I froze mid-sentence, feeling my body shiver violently at the mere but terrifying thought; what if I was _wrong_? What if it was _his_ soul that he came to collect? ‘It… It’s not, is it?’ The insufferable lunatic looked around dramatically with a long _hmmm_ , making a show of himself, as if he didn’t know or understand just what I asked him. Gritting my teeth and swallowing my already wounded pride, I resorted to begging. ‘Grell, _please_. I know you know. Please, just this once. I’m sure that even you can honour that we’re on uneven ground, here.’

He sighed unnecessarily loudly but lowered and silenced his scythe. ‘Fine, but only since you asked so nicely, _Sebas-chan_.’ I watched him flip through his notebook like a hawk, looking for any clues in his expression. I found none. ‘Hmm, interesting, interesting. Quite interesting for sure.’ He murmured to himself before snapping the book closed. I felt a phantom squeeze in my throat. ‘Nope, Ciel Phantomhive isn’t due to die in the closest future.’

My body sagged with what I supposed was relief. The statement was vague, but it could have been worse. ‘Then… let me take him home. He’s barely alive.’ Grell only looked at me, unimpressed, with arms crossed across his chest. I lowered my head, shreds of pride be damned, trying desperately to get on his good side. ‘Grell… Please break the seal that binds me.’

He was silent for the longest while so that I started to wonder whether he disappeared off into thin air. When he finally spoke, his voice was loud and high-pitched. ‘Oii, aren’t you making an awful lot of demands today, Sebas-chan?’

‘I’m not… demanding. I’m begging you here.’

‘Ah, that’s right, that’s right.’ I could hear the smirk in his voice as he slowly walked back to me. He stepped right in front of me, grabbing my face and forcing me to look at him. I watched his wide grin, his sharp teeth glistening. ‘You do beg prettily, that’s for sure.’ I jolted, eyes widening, as his scythe came to life again. ‘I wonder if you make equally pretty noises when your guts are spilling out of you?’

The reaper swung his weapon before I had a chance to react. I made an inhuman, choking-like noise. I was released. The tiles underneath my feet were sliced, breaking the marking that held me captive. With an almost effortless tug I freed myself from the chains at last and fell to my knees with the red-clad creature towering above me. My essence coming back to me was so relieving that it bordered on painful. Still severely weakened, I focused all my energy into re-growing my eye, not wanting my Master to see me as a rotting, infected, disturbing monstrosity.

‘Well, I guess I’ll have to find out another time. You owe me one, demon.’ The reaper whined above me.

‘I know.’ I rasped out my reply, getting back onto unsteady feet as soon as I regained vision in both of my human eyes, and took a few hurried strides to the boy’s side. My eyes widened as I took in the sight of him; bare, bloodied, and bruised, shivering with a trembling lip, glazed-over eyes and rosy cheeks as if in fever. It sounded as if he was murmuring something under his breath, but it was unintelligible. I felt a sensation in my human body, not unlike the ones I felt when the vile creatures had beaten and burned me. His own eyes seemed as if they looked right through me but without seeing me. ‘Young Master… Please hold on just a little longer, it will all be over soon.’ I spoke to him softly in an attempt to offer comfort as I made a quick effort of freeing him from his binds.

‘B-broken… Broken… It’s br-broken, it’s broken-’

‘Young Master?’

‘Broken, y-you- You need to… to take it now, b-before all- before it’s _all_ b-broken.’    

It took me a moment to realise he was talking about his soul. I sighed, taking him into my arms as gently as I could, but he still whined in pain, surely aching immeasurably all over. ‘Master, you have a high fever. But you’ll be just fine; we’ll be home soon, and I’ll make you some warm milk with honey.’ Holding his lolling head closer to my chest, I turned back to the redhead who stared right back at me, not even attempting to hide that he had been observing our exchange intently. ‘Thank you for letting us leave, reaper.’ To my surprise, I found that those words were somehow genuine; he had the perfect opportunity to end us both.

‘Hmph.’ He scoffed, shrugging with something akin to annoyance. ‘You’re in my debt and I’ll make sure you repay me in full, I hope you know that.’

I barely managed to suppress my urge to groan; of course I knew, and I hated it. In an attempt to get myself at least somewhat out of the deep indebtment, I strode over to the pouting man and leaning over the trembling body in my arms, I brought my lips to his as a form of payment. He froze for a moment, before pretty much _squealing_ into my lips, his face flaring up and giving off heat as much as a steaming bath. Wincing, I allowed him to grab the back of my neck and shove his overly-sweet tongue into my mouth, and I remember dimly wondering whether the sickly taste was a common trait of all Shinigami or if it was just Grell. When he finally, _oh finally_ pulled back, his green eyes were practically glowing. He held my gaze for a moment longer, before a particularly violent shiver and a pained whine made us both glance down at the unconscious young earl in my arms.

Leaning away from the reaper, I wanted nothing else but to take our leave, hating not being able to provide the much-needed warmth for my Master, wearing nothing but tattered and bloodied trousers myself. With a final, dramatic whine and sigh though, the reaper pulled off a large red shawl from his neck that I noticed only now as a new addition to his usual attire. Ensuring the distaste was _very clear_ on his face, he wrapped the fabric over the thin shoulders of the form in my arms, leaving me dumbfounded. ‘It didn’t go well with my coat anyway; not a fitting shade of red.’ He groaned with a furrowed brow. ‘You didn’t even take note of it!’

‘I’m… _impressed_ , Shinigami. Who knew you could play fair?’

‘I could say the same thing about you, _demon_.’ He flashed the briefest of grins that disappeared within a second. ‘Now get out of my sight so that I can tear this place to pieces and have fun on my own. Can’t have that garbage summoning more of your smelly kind. Go, before I change my mind.’

I was more than happy to finally do so, and disappeared with a flutter of black feathers.

 

Something was _wrong_ at the manor; that much was obvious to my once-again sharp senses well before I set my foot at the doorstep. Finally arriving only confirmed my suspicion; broken trees, destroyed gardens, shattered windows at the upper floor, crumbled bricks around the area where the kitchen was. The light drizzle was quickly turning to heavy rainfall, so I banged my fist against the front door loudly – I _could_ have just let myself inside, but preferred to not add a broken door to the list of things that urgently needed to be repaired. ‘Finny, Meyrin, Bard, Snake, open up this instant, the young Master has been injured!’

‘Mr Sebastian!’

Before long I heard noises coming from the other side, and the stench of blood and death permeated the wood before the door swung open. I barged inside hastily to protect the boy from the rain and only then did I allow myself to take in the pitiful sight of the three servants standing in front of me and assess the damage.

Finny’s left sleeve was tied tightly above his shoulder, layers upon layers of bloody bandages wrapped around the short stump of what was once his left arm. The straw hat he cherished so dearly was missing from his back. His bright, wide eyes were blood-shot and overflowing with tears. The quivering maid’s ones were likely in a similar state, had I been able to see them; alas, a bandage wrapped tightly around her head kept them out of sight as she clung to Finny’s remaining arm. If she still _had_ them, that was. Snake was also covered in bandages, almost from head to toe, but didn’t seem to be missing any body pieces; apart from the serpents, which really could have been considered a part of him. The stubbled man was nowhere in sight; I couldn’t smell his presence, either. ‘What in the hell happened here?’

Meyrin and Finny started to cry in earnest; my patience was wearing thin, withered away by the frustration of just _not knowing_ , but just before it snapped, the maid started to attempt to form coherent sentences. ‘There were too- too many of them! P-please forgive us, we-we did everything we could, but there were just too many of them!’ She cried into her hands. ‘Before we managed to stop them, they-! We… The manor- Bard-!’

The mutilated gardener joined her wailing explanations. ‘M-Mr Bard lured a la-large group of them downstairs a-and… And then he set off a massive explosion, he- he…!’ The blond struggled to get air into his lungs through the sobs that wrecked him. ‘We’re so sorry, Mr Sebastian, I- We were so worried, y-you were gone for weeks! W-we feared that… that you’d never come back!’ Snake remained silent, his eyes dead and empty.

I didn’t know what to tell them. For a moment I just stood there, looking at those three pitiful creatures. _Completely human, utterly fragile; Finny’s arm won’t grow back; the chef’s remains won’t stitch themselves together, and who knew what kind of damage Snake and Meyrin had really suffered_.

‘I… Please let us continue this at a later moment; I must tend to young Master’s injuries.’

They moved out of my way, Finny gently pulling the maid along with him as she stuttered. ‘W-will- will Master be alright?’

I did not give her an answer. I did not know.

The boy was unconscious for most of the evening when I tended to him which really could only have been a good thing. I hated lowering him into a cold bath, seeing his limbs shake with more force as he started to whine louder, his lips turning blue and trembling; all I wanted was to wrap him up in warm blankets, but his fever had to be brought down. I washed him quickly, trying to get off all the dried blood and grime without scrubbing too hard. The water quickly became a brownish-red, and I had to change it so that the suspended dirt would not infect his broken skin. In the fresh water it became clear just how many new marks – both temporary and permanent – his body was patterned with. Holding his head steady over the edge of the tub, I kept my lips to his temple, brushing his hair away from his eyes, humming some of the violin pieces he actually enjoyed playing – how fitting that all of them were always sorrowful and melancholic. I remember being perfectly aware of my more-than-odd actions, but at the same time could not help but want to will the pain away, still feeling the ghost of agony on my own skin. But _I healed_ , as I knew I would. _He didn’t_. His body would have to go through an equally painful process of recovery before he would be able to stand on his own feet again. I only guessed that this thought made me _feel_ something; something not physical – there was no reason for me to be feeling bodily pain at that moment, and yet, the sensation that was spreading through me was comparable to physical ache. I didn’t _understand_ , but I left that for another time. I resumed my – what I hoped to be comforting – humming until the breath in that small chest evened out and his cheeks and forehead stopped burning under my lips.

He became half-conscious momentarily when I put him in his bed and started bandaging the more open wounds. He seemed unaware of his surroundings so I spoke to him quietly, assuring him of his safety and repeating my name until he appeared to remember who I was. Once he did, he started muttering once more. Urging me to claim his soul. Blaming it on his still heavily-confused state I didn’t make much of it, only encouraged him to sleep some more after coaxing him to drink some of the herbal tea and eat a small bite of the scone that the servants have unexpectedly delivered – after which I advised them to rest, assuring them of my protection over the young Master and the manor overnight. I stayed with the ill earl, sitting on the edge of his bed and brushed away any frowns on his forehead that might have indicated nightmares with my once-again gloved hand. But when he woke up in the early gray hours of the morning he was fully coherent, and yet he still kept repeating the same incomprehensible things.

‘Take it, Sebastian. It’s torn and broken. Take it before it decays so much that even you won’t want it.’

I tried to grasp what he meant, but I couldn’t. Instead, I leaned into his neck and inhaled his scent deeply; mainly to prove a point to him – not as if I couldn’t smell his soul with my every needless breath. ‘I assure you, your soul is quite intact, young Master. And you know I do not lie.’ I sat back to stare at the bruised face intently, at its cheekbones made too prominent by starvation. ‘But do tell, Master, since I find it difficult to understand; why do you wish for me so to claim your soul prematurely? Do you want to die so badly?’

His silence as he seemed to genuinely _think the questions over_ was not something I expected. ‘I don’t break promises, Sebastian. I might bend rules in games but I’m not going to try and weasel my way out of our contract.’ He told me. ‘And… I don’t know if I’ll take my revenge. I don’t know if I have the strength to chase after it anymore.’

Right then, I should have done it. It would have been only logical to devour him without a second thought or even a word of explanation. It was my _right_. And yet- And _yet_. Why didn’t I? I was curious, wasn’t I? My whole viewpoint on these creatures – on my _Master_ – has been shifted by the most recent experience and I was confused, but I was _oh_ , so very _curious_. I didn’t feel like returning to hell just yet. That must have been the reason.

‘If I may, my Lord; perhaps you shouldn’t make such haste decisions, especially in such a state – we’ve only just returned and you’ve suffered great wounds. Both your body and mind are still weakened.’

He smirked without humour or looking at me, and I knew _exactly_ what he was going to say. ‘You didn’t seem to care about that the last time. When I was poisoned by gas. I was definitely not in the right state of mind back then, and yet you almost killed me. Why is it supposedly so different now?’

‘I… have my reasons, my Lord.’

This was as futile as attempts go; he could simply order me to tell him and I would have no other choice but obey – or at least try to, since I was vague on the answers myself. But he didn’t. And I wondered why.

I stayed with him as he slept for another few hours until hunger woke him. Suspecting he wouldn’t eat much I brought him a tray with fresh light pastries that the servants managed to make – with which I was impressed, I had to admit, considering their standard ineptness – along with green tea; hoping to gradually get his stomach used to being full again. Unsurprisingly, he wanted to spend the rest of the day in bed; we played chess once and I brought him books to keep him occupied, knowing the constant troublesome need for stimulation of human minds. In between, I managed to assess the damage to the manor – it was extensive, but nothing that could not be easily fixed once the three mortals turned their backs.

In the afternoon, I offered them a hand, seeing that pitiful state they were all in. The young gardener sat on a stool with determination to hold back his screams as I tended to his ripped-off arm. He still had a tourniquet wrapped tightly around it to stop the blood flow; the pitiful stitches he attempted to do himself would do a poor job of it, and the scarring process would take forever, if at all. I disinfected the raw flesh, re-stitched and re-bandaged it. I remember thinking the young human would be extremely lucky if he would not die of infection. Meyrin was way more reluctant, insisting that her own injuries were well tended to; that there was nothing to be done, anyway. With some effort, I managed to coax her into letting me remove her bandage after promising I would not make her open her eyes. They seemed to be damaged beyond repair, with even their shape under her eyelids uneven. Large cuts stretched from her cheekbones to the brows. I cleaned away the dried blood and wrapped clean bandage around her head. When I came to Snake to clean his wounds he showed me his empty mouth devoid of tongue as an explanation to his silence. Later on, I found out from the other two that his snakes have been cut to pieces by the attackers, along with his tongue. I wondered about the fate of those three as Phantomhive servants, now that their strongest assets were taken away.

The young earl recovered, albeit slowly. At least physically. Mentally, things were even worse, especially when he finally left the comfort of his bed and met with the disabled servants. The smell of guilt hung about him strong, just like that time when Lady Elizabeth fell ill. I remember him asking me one day if he was cursed, with everyone around him dying and suffering. I admitted to him of having speculated the same thing.

Days passed and became weeks, but he remained withdrawn, distant; barely speaking more than his mute footman. The household continued to function, but only on the surface like thin ice on a lake while dark, frigid waters flowed underneath; one wrong step and you’d drown in grief and depression that they desperately tried to keep covered up. It wasn’t really working. Agony came off from them in thick rolling waves, red and live and _raw_ , especially at night when they believed in their privacy and sometimes cried themselves to sleep.

Except for the young Master; _oh, darling boy, you always were different, weren’t you_. His grief was cold and blue, dark and still and quiet, subduing the spark of his life further yet, like thick heavy gas flowing and trying to extinguish a burning candle. I supposed that’s what he meant by his soul being broken. Before long, the darkness of the manor – which I would usually revel in – began to rub me the wrong way. I found myself thinking back to times past when the servants were livelier and my Master was louder. Oddly enough, I found myself wishing that those times could return.

 

It must have been another few weeks before my contractor gave me an odd order as he was getting ready for bed. ‘Help me undress, Sebastian.’ Since he turned around fifteen or so he’s been insisting he was more than old enough to tend to his own attire and baths, his puberty seemingly – perhaps understandably – making him too self-conscious and embarrassed to be nude around me anymore. Nevertheless, I complied with his unexpected command. I stood in front of him, unbuttoning his shirt, not needing to kneel down anymore due to the growth spurt he experienced during puberty -  though it was rather minor, and he still didn’t have a hope of ever reaching the same height as my own human form. I was in the process of sliding the garment off his shoulders when he spoke up again. ‘Are you bored, demon?’

I really couldn’t help but tease him a little. ‘My Lord, are you implying that I’m taking such an excessive amount of time in undressing you, long enough for me to grow bored?’

He wasn’t amused. ‘You know what I mean. Aren’t you tired of playing a brat’s butler?’

‘I am not, young Master.’

‘You’re deceiving me.’ Before I could remind him that I was not, in fact, permitted to lie to him or _deceive_ him, something dark flashed through his mismatching eyes. ‘A demon like you must crave for a more malicious sort and source of entertainment; not cooking dinners and managing servants. No, you need something filthy and corrupted to satisfy you as you wait for your soul, do you not.’ It wasn’t a question; it was an assumption he hissed out with certainty and malevolence.

And it made no sense. ‘Young Master, I really don’t think I un-’

‘Oh please, you probably keep a personal score or something, huh? Made a point to fuck all your contractors at least once?’ I considered his words for a split second; it wasn’t all that uncommon for me to develop sexual relationships with my masters but this time the thought didn’t really cross my mind since I’ve always seen him as just a child. ‘Come on, now. Or am I so unattractive that even a demon won’t bed me?’

There was something predatory in his eyes. No, not that. Something _vicious_. I fixed him with a cold glare, unimpressed. ‘Quite on the contrary, young Master.’ After all, I could not lie.

‘Then what’s stopping you, huh?’ I barely noticed him undoing buttons of my own clothes, too focused on watching his face, his grin, with a kind of morbid fascination; like being unable to tear your eyes from natural disasters that often wreck this earthly realm. ‘Oh, don’t tell me you’re so _moral,_ you lustful hellish creature; you have me defenceless and willing now. But you probably touched yourself to the thought of tearing me open when I was still a child anyway, didn’t you?’

Spiteful. Vulgar. _Disgusting_. But how very, very _fake_. There was a heat he tried to exude as if to cover up the cold of his true self deep in his bones. I didn’t understand why.  

‘I assure you that was not the case.’ I answered him calmly.

The earl’s face fell into a dark frown, angered by my lack of reciprocation. ‘It’s an order, Sebastian.’ His eye glowed a perfect violet as he hissed the words out. The thrum originating from my hand reverberated through my whole being. ‘Fuck me. Tear into me. Leave nothing of me.’

Fake. _Fake_.

‘Young Master-’

‘It’s an order! Don’t disobey me!’

The moment between the shouted order and to when I had him pinned to the bed completely bare was somehow lost to me. With each second in this _insufferable_ creature’s presence, it became more and more difficult to rein in my impulsive, violent demonic self. I snarled into his face, my voice becoming distorted and not fully human anymore. ‘Foolish human, not knowing what you’re asking for. Pain; is that what you want? For me to hurt you?’ I shook him a little, to help deliver my point.

‘Fucking _do it_ , _hurt me._ You must be _aching_ for a warm body to sink into.’ The young man squirmed and opened himself sinfully in my hold. ‘Hungry for soul, hungry for flesh…’

I shook, battling against the contradictions. _Oh,_ _I hated you to your very core in that moment. Giving into your cruel game and my demonic lustful nature – as you so correctly observed – meant breaching the contract and hurting you; something which I swore to protect you from. Not giving in meant not only having to hold back my instincts but, more importantly,_ also _violating our agreement by not following your orders. It was the cruellest game you came up with by far_.

‘Are you going to ignore my order _again_ , demon? Like when they tied me down and you didn’t help me no matter how much I screamed for you?’ Teeth elongated in my jaw as I bared them in a growl. _You were playing dirty, Master; you knew very well why I didn’t come to your aid._ ‘Don’t make me repeat myself again! Do it, Sebastian!’

Pain seared through me as the Faustian mark on my hand finally burst open with blood yet again. I’ve lost control. Within moments I had my fingers inside him, opening him up. Too fast, too rough, but he kept pleading for even more pain. He wasn’t even close to being ready when I shoved myself into him without even stopping to undress, my human form having responded to his vile words stupidly, blindly. I thrust into him fast, the sin at my core elated at how satisfying his warm, living body felt as his thin limbs clung onto me.

He screamed, and he screamed. Yelled until his voice pushed through my clouded judgement and brought me back to reality. _I was hurting him_. His soul stank of nothing but agony and pain. Of… sorrow. There wasn’t even a hint of pleasure within his heart. Hot tears soaked my neck and shirt collar as frail fingers dug into my back, making me falter. I froze, realising the damage I was inflicting.

‘Don’t you fucking dare stop! Obey me!’ He cried, delirious and hoarse.

My body began to move again – less to quench the carnal craving, and more to satisfy the painful tug of our bond and obey my Master who continued to scream until he could no longer; his shouts turned to soft whines and sobs as he hid his face in my chest. _It was a raging inferno, chaos, madness; a Hell that even I couldn’t stand._ That was when the unmistakeable metallic smell filled my nose and brought me back before I lost all reason again. ‘Young Master, you’re _bleeding_.’ I gritted out, slowing down, only to have his fingernails dig deeper into me. Undeterred, he kept ordering me to thrust harder, even though his voice was only a croak. I could not _stand_ it, and growled at him in warning, beast-like and low. ‘ _Ciel_.’

I grasped onto the brief irritation and surprise in his eyes as he pulled away – a glimpse of something _honest_ – at having been called by his first name by his butler, and pulled myself back to my senses and out of him, jerking back slightly and fixing my clothes at once with an inhumanly fast movement so that he lost his grip around my neck and fell back against his soft mattress.

The young earl’s expression made him look barely human himself. He was completely _unhinged_. His eyes blown wide seemed to give him no comprehension of reality and held pure, sloshing madness inside of them; his lips were parted as his body gasped in ragged breaths which never appeared to actually reach his lungs. I tried to identify some emotion from the smell of his soul but couldn’t make out even _one_. It was a terrifying, unsettling sight; it was as if he became possessed – as if the darkness in his mind finally broke through the walls he put around it to shield himself and his sanity. Tears and sweat and shock were plastered onto his face. Within a second, they gave way to fury. ‘Sebast-!’

‘Silence! Get a hold of yourself, you imprudent _brat_!’

My loud shout startled both of us in equal measure. Shock returned to his face and he stared at me with eyes blown wide once more. And then, slowly but surely, the haze from his eyes began to clear as reason came back to him. He blinked, and his hand flew to his mouth, as if he has genuinely been unaware of his actions, and only now had realised what had happened. What he did. What he made _me do_.

Old tears didn’t have time to dry on the flushed cheeks before new ones came. He bony shoulders shook with broken, hoarse sobs as he turned his face to the side, hiding away from me. I felt something as well, something _bad_ , and I couldn’t shake off the impression that it had to do with having raised my voice at him. As if I had the ability to feel the human emotion of _guilt_. His mind was so raw and fragile; and I, being a merciless demon, had often teased him about such vulnerability. This time I couldn’t. I felt his overwhelming distress in my own veins and I couldn’t tease him for it, lest he lost himself again. Tentatively, I brought a hand to his cheek to wipe away his tears with a feathery touch, unsure of whether he would push me away. He didn’t. He only flinched briefly, making that _feeling_ even worse. I only spoke once his quiet cries subsided substantially. ‘Forgive me, young Master.’ My own voice was somewhat light and breathless with relief, now that our bond wasn’t pulling me apart with conflicting orders to _protect_ and to _destroy_. ‘But do enlighten me… What was all this about?’

The young earl stayed silent for the longest time and I started to wonder whether he was going to reply at all, or if he even heard me. ‘I wanted to forget.’

It was so quiet that, had I been human, I would never have heard it at all. ‘Pardon? What do you mean, Master?’

‘I wanted to forget everything, silence those… screams in my head. Just for a moment.’ My eyes flashed to his blue ring, recalling similar words about _screams in his head_ , from years ago. ‘I wanted you… to hurt me until I couldn’t think anymore.’

That wasn’t really what I was expecting, and yet it didn’t entirely surprise me either. I sighed, a little exasperated. ‘Since you decided to use _that_ approach, would it not have been a more logical to ask for mind-numbing pleasure instead of pain?’

He lowered his hand, slowly turning back to me; _unfurling_. ‘You’re a demon. Dishing out pain should be second nature to you, not pleasure.’

‘Ah, I see. You do seem to take me for a barbaric mindless beast then, young Master.’ I couldn’t decide if that brought on a little _distaste_ or not. ‘You see, any being with at least a _lick_ of sense knows that pleasure shared is much more satisfying than pleasure forced; for all parties involved.’ As an afterthought, I added in an equally low murmur. ‘I could show you one day, if you should so wish.’

He didn’t look at me when he whispered back. ‘Show me now.’

I wanted to argue again; he really was in no state for taking part in such… _activities_. I wanted to argue, but held myself back, remembering once more how the physical pain felt on my skin in that cold, tiled room; and remembering that my Lord was still human, and like a human he wished to escape from anguish of the mind, so much worse than any ache of the flesh I could imagine. Whatever plagued him that night must have been exceptionally vicious and merciless, and I didn’t find it in myself to deny him release from it, if only momentary. So I wordlessly complied with his desperate wish and leaned down to his face, slowly, as not to startle him but – _ah, no_. He didn’t let me kiss him; he turned his blushing face away and sealed his lips. _How human, how futile, how odd and unreasonable_. There was something in many of those creatures, I noted over the centuries, that made them give away their flesh so freely, so lewdly and shamelessly, and yet something as innocent and insignificant as a kiss was held sacred. Especially in your case, young Master, after you’ve turned your first shared _unforced_ intimacy to something not dissimilar to an act of violence, of violation. _Or would the feeling of other lips against your own have reminded you of your deceased fiancée, little one? Would that have shattered your heart?_ No matter. I placed a small peck on the side of his neck instead, on his quick, fluttering pulse. So fragile, so very fragile it never ceased to amaze me – so brittle, like butterfly’s wings. It would only take a bite with sharp teeth, or a drag of my claws. That’s _all_ it would take.

I was about to lean away to continue fulfilling his request, but then his unusually warm hands framed my face gently, almost as if _caringly_ , and something clenched and twisted violently inside me as I stared into his face. He looked at me so _softly_ it made me uneasy. ‘Do you despise me, Sebastian?’ A broken whisper, that was all.

The irrational and unreasonable sensation of phantom physical pain made me grit my teeth. I didn’t understand why I felt it. Neither did I know why he asked me this; my opinion of him never seemed to be of importance – the only thing that mattered was my loyalty to him and to our contract. Moreover, why would burning hatred be the first thing he assumed? ‘I most certainly do not, young Master.’

He said no more and let me go but the odd sensation stayed. I found myself wanting to end this swiftly; the boy was still vulnerable and hurt, and I felt uncomfortable in my own skin for whatever reason. Renewed penetration was not an option – with body torn and bleeding, pleasure would be the last thing he would feel. So I settled myself between his soft pale thighs and took his half-erection into my mouth. Fingers flew to my hair, and then to his own to dig into his own scalp. A startled gasp echoed in the room. He smelled of reluctance, of embarrassment; arousal was shy and slow to take over; it did eventually, but never completely. Something always held him back, just as he held back any whines that fought to escape his throat. I allowed him that this time, although I vowed to myself that, should we ever partake in something similar again, I would make him scream his _demon’s_ name to the high heavens.

From below, I watched my stoic Master fall apart yet further; his virginal body arched, so unused and _unacquainted_ with physical pleasure of this intensity – his small chest heaved, skin strained against his ribs as he fought for breath. In any other scenario I would have dragged it out; led him to the edge but without letting him go – I’d pull him back and forward in the most frustrating dance so that the release at the end of the song could be blinding and so much sweeter. I would have given myself time to marvel at his flushed cheeks and quivering knees. But now was not the time, and I aimed to make him crash fast, before he even knew he was falling.

And he did. His body went rigid, taut like string; his breath became erratic and laboured, coming only in strangled broken gasps as if he was in immense pain. Tendons strained visibly in his trembling hands as they gripped the bedsheets so tight that the skin around knuckles went white. But I was furious that with his head thrown back I could not see his face. It couldn’t be helped though; instead I focused on the sweetest nectar he released on my tongue; a treasured pre-taste of my Master’s soul, overflowing with innocence and darkness alike, setting my body alight. And yet all of it was _anticlimactic_ – which had nothing to do with my own lack of release. It felt wrong, like a wasted opportunity; would the _delirium_ not have possessed him tonight, I would have been able to make his first time pleasurable, elated, _special_ ; instead of scarring and probably scaring him away from ever attempting any closeness of this kind ever again – at least with _me_. But perhaps, were he in his right state of mind, we never would have gotten to this stage in the first place. Maybe it was the only possibility.

I pulled away when I felt him flinch with overstimulation. He curled himself up on his front atop the bedsheets, the thin fabric bunched up in his small, bony fists as his whole frame trembled still. Soft, pitiful whines began to escape his throat every now and again; uncontrolled, as if he were feverish. I sat back and watched him, wrinkling my nose. His soul _reeked_ of agony then, of anguish, of unfulfillment – despite the fact that his body has just been thoroughly satisfied – and of the ever-present loneliness; a smell so constant I sometimes forgot it was even there. _How was any of this supposed to be of any benefit to you, since you seemed to be as miserable as before?_ But another spice that I sensed bearing down on that tormented heart of his at that moment was disappointment.

_Oh, young Master, how very human you are and have always been._

Throughout the countless years of my overly-long life I’ve observed those fragile, foolish, little creatures as a form of entertainment and passing the time. I’ve watched the young and the old; the rich and the poor, the healthy and the sick, in every corner of the globe. Though they vary somewhat in their aspirations, behaviours, and personalities, there’s one thing that always remains constant, and it’s a thing that so many of them will try to reject – just like many beings, they’re _pack_ animals. Their weak souls, minds, and bodies are not built for lonesome survival. Even powerful death-defying beings like angels, reapers, or even demons such as myself – we rely on some kind of companionship; between our own kind, or our human contractors. Granted, it is not essential to our survival, but it makes the passage of time that less bit tiresome and dull.

And then there was this tiny, weak, quivering _bug_ that kept denying it all and claiming he didn’t need anyone. _How hypocritical of you that was, tiny Earl, after you forbade me to lie_. Or have you been telling yourself this for so long that you started to believe this? How very foolish of you that would be. Was this why the disappointment permeated your core? Were you hoping that laying with me would quench this hollow pull of loneliness in your heart? Was this another reason, one that you didn’t want to tell me about? How desperate you must have been to drag your demon butler to bed and _beg_ for more and more pain so that you could _feel,_ so that you could _forget_. I wondered; d _id you ever regret not accepting the affections of others around you when they were still alive, now only left with a hellish being to hold you as you cried?_ But since it was you butler’s ‘comfort’ that you sought – the only comfort that you had left – I swore to give it to you in return for you always being such an enjoyable pastime of mine.

His reaction to me resting my cold, bare hand on his shoulder blade was not unlike one he might have given me had I burnt him with a branding iron. He gasped with a whine, startled. But what was most captivating, was the powerful shift in his emotions, so intense I can still remember the smell; could smell it so easily as if it were something physical right under my nose. And yet, that time, I could not tell what it was. It was a concoction I could not decode, utterly mingled and intertwined and conflicting. It could have been relief, or it could have been fear. It could have been anger just as well as it could have been longing. Perhaps it was serenity or despair or something in between. Maybe it was a bone-deep _ache_ for _something._

‘S-Sebastian…’

The mark on my hand thrummed with his meek, almost silent call. ‘Yes, my Lord?’

He spoke my name once more and the seal itched again at his unspoken commands. With all the patience of a centuries-old being, I withdrew my hand as he moved again and watched him slowly push himself up on his thin arms to a sitting position. He didn’t look at me. I took in his coloured cheeks – rosy from embarrassment and gasping out in climax – and the red water-lines of his big, mismatching eyes. I sat and observed with silent awe and fascination at this boy’s unusual behaviour as he continued to give me a rare insight at the splendour and depth of his heart, filled with emotions and desires much more complex and diverse than just anger and thirst for revenge; emotions I could never _understand_. No – at such cherished occasions, my little Master, in the impossibly rare moments when you made yourself vulnerable and became truthful, showed the real you along with a glimpse of your core’s light, you were the most alluring of all creatures; your soul was that of a child and of an old, withered man; it was the filthiest, cruellest destruction, and yet it shone so brightly through the darkness that it scorched everything to dust. You were both wise through your experiences, and utterly foolish through your humanity. Your endurance seemed to have no limits, and yet you were nothing but a crawling insect under my thumb. You were my perfect little paradox and impossibility, wrapped up and burning in this small body now so open and honest, laying all your secrets bare. In these moments, you reminded me why I dressed up and played our little game of earl and butler. Why it was all worth it.

Words seemed to rest on the tip of his tongue, but they stayed there. He looked so utterly lost, so uncertain of himself, so very unlike the proud figure he was by day, protected by his expensive robes and eyepatch. I watched him still as he lowered himself back down, but had to admit that him laying his head and hand on my lap surprised me. He was so very still, as if he were already dead. I humoured him by carding my fingers through his hair, stroking gently; something humans ought to find comforting, wondering if he’ll reject it like the kiss. He didn’t. I felt the tension slowly seep out from his muscles. He brought his knees to his chest as he laid on his side, which made him look even more vulnerable and fragile.

Were my heart capable of emotion, it would have broken; had I a soul, it would have quivered. This little human with his loved ones ripped away from him and replaced with strangers inflicting torture I saw in the deepest pits of Hell, with a title and a name too big for him, and with a demon at his side whose teeth were always hovering above his claimed soul, ready to devour it. This little creature who gave up his essence for slaughter and eternal annihilation in return for just a few mere years free from the pain and humiliation he endured at the hands of his captors. Now it was _my_ hands that he was in, and yet, despite the awareness of that, it was me that he curled up against. What I felt was that phantom physical pain in my chest _yet again_. Maybe it was my heart breaking, after all? I didn’t know.

‘Young Master…’ I began to slowly withdraw my hand; with the heat of our intimacy dissipating and rationality returning, I wanted to reason with him about the absurdity of seeking comfort from the one who will inarguably extinguish his existence. Or maybe I wanted to ask him to really explain what just happened. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, really. Whatever it was, my disappearing touch made him jerk so violently that I paused.

‘No!’ It was nothing more than a panicked gasp. ‘Not… Not yet. Let… me believe- Let me pretend, just for a moment longer.’ As his loyal butler I obeyed, and renewed my caresses of his head, feeling a small, wet patch forming on my thigh where his face rested against the black fabric. We stayed like that for a long while before his whisper filled the room once more. ‘Do it. Take it, Sebastian.’

I sighed, not trying very hard to hide my exasperation; here he was with this nonsense again. ‘Let’s not talk about this now, my Lord. You’re still upset, you-’

‘I’m perfectly aware of what I’m saying, _demon_. I want you to kill me and take my soul, as per our agreement, which I’m breaching by abandoning my revenge half-way.’

I should have done it then. I had every right.

‘Let us talk about it a little later, Master.’

 

We didn’t. Instead, as if to give me solid proof of his words we paid our last visit to the old Queen soon after that. Standing outside the room in the obnoxiously-decorated hall I could hear their conversation perfectly; the Earl of Phantomhive was giving up the title of the Queen’s Watchdog. Obviously, being the selfish thing that she was, she wasn’t happy – not when my Master cleaned up so many messes for her, saved so many of her fellow spoilt royals without a complaint. She tried convincing him. But the hag must have seen the apathy in his eye, his resolve to end this. She gave up, certainly knowing that it was the last she would ever see of him – I was glad for it; not having to intervene and deal with the woman myself was definitely something that pleased me.

Neither a glance nor a word was cast in my direction as he exited. He led the way silently until we were outside among the front gardens, out of anyone’s earshot. He finally stopped and turned to me, standing to his full height, unwavering and unafraid. ‘This is it, demon. I’ve made my choice, and I’m not turning back. I’ve given you proof; my chase after revenge is over. You’re entitled to my soul, to have your way with me. I’m in your hands from now on. It’s all up to you, now.’

I couldn’t help but snicker; such big words for such a little bug. ‘Ah, indeed. But you know it’s not quite right; you shall always be my Master, until you die.’ He fixed me with a silent serious glare, as if unimpressed by my light-heartedness – but said nothing. ‘Let us simply say it’s not your time, little Lord. I will not take your soul yet.’ He didn’t appear convinced – as if he expected me to laugh in his face any moment should he believe something so ridiculous. But I had patience and waited him out until he silently admitted defeat and looked away.

‘I don’t understand why…’ _Neither did I, my Lord_. ‘I don’t know what you’re planning, and how long you’re going to keep this up for. But if that’s the case, I have a… request.’ I was intrigued. _Request_? ‘Don’t take me away unexpectedly or in my sleep.’

How odd. _Why not just order me, Master_? Ah, but what a _human_ request indeed; I came across humans from all cultures and all ages, praying to their creator, their God, to spare them from an unpredictable, sudden demise – what an unfortunate way to go for these short-lived creatures, surely _. But my young Lord, oh, you prayed to_ me _, the sin at your shoulder; what splendid irony_.

Before answering, I let myself consider the _request_ for a moment, which I had no requirement to oblige with. Would doing so get in the way of my plans? Had I been curious to see the shock and panic on his face as he would realise one day as I’d stand behind him, that he’s taking his last breaths? Was him struggling for a few more precious heartbeats as I tore life out of his chest the way I imagined this all to end? Suppressing a frown, I realised it has been some time since I considered the termination of our contract; to such extent had I been absorbed in those riveting games of his life. I concluded that there was no real preference or plan on my part, and neither would I mind starting my dinner with a little ceremonious preparation and _saying Grace to my Lord_. I bowed low. ‘You have my word, young Master.’

 

It wasn’t long before we packed our bags – but only figuratively, actually. He didn’t pack more than a single backpack with his foldable chess board, his favourite tea cup – funnily enough, a good bit of money, and a change or two very casual clothes. He instructed me to change my attire to something simpler than that of an earl’s butler, too.

Apart from the servants, he didn’t tell anyone that he was leaving – not that there was anyone to inform, anyway. He hadn’t spoken to his deceased fiancée’s family since the funeral – they didn’t want to know him – and he never kept very close ties with any distant relatives to begin with. But those _three pitiful_ souls… They were his _real_ family. And like a real family they didn’t want to let him go. They might have matured somewhat over those few years, but they snivelled like children – at least Meyrin and Finny did; Snake was shaken up into silence and kept his grief on the inside. Not as if he could have actually _said_ anything. With the young woman crying into her hands, the gardener was the only one forming some sort of coherent words. No solid arguments – just begging to stay. And my Master listened to all their pleas silently and with resolve. He would not be swayed. For whatever reason, he made the irreversible decision to leave his entire old life behind.

‘L-Let us come with you, then!’ The boy knew he wouldn’t convince him, but he kept trying desperately anyway.

‘No. You all need to stay away from me. I’m cursed, and that curse is what left you all disabled and Bard dead.’ Those were cruel and harsh words. The servants fell silent and didn’t deny the superstitious assumption. ‘I’m leaving the manor to the three of you. Do whatever you want with it; stay in it, leave it, burn it, take what you want from it and sell the rest. It’s yours.’

‘We’d never sell it, how could we, young Master?!’ The maid cried. ‘What if you’ll want to come back? You’ll come back one day, won’t you?’

She could not see the sad resolve in his eye, bandage now permanently over her eyes, while I could smell every wave of ache coming off of him. ‘No, Meyrin. I will not.’ He spoke slowly, stiffly; I knew that in his own way he grieved over the separation also, and that he would miss them to some degree, too. ‘Take care of yourselves, you three.’ The maid and the gardener shook with sobs. The footman looked away, blinking away the tears in his eyes so that they wouldn’t fall.

Finny, never having any self-restraint, threw his remaining arm around my Master – now looking so very ordinary in his simple clothes – into a pitiful embrace. The blond babbled through tears, thanking him for the last time for giving him a new life. My Lord didn’t object to the sudden show of affection, but certainly did tense up and felt somewhat awkward about it. As the blond moved to shake my hand the crying woman reached out to my contractor until he took her hand gently in his and pulled her into a hug himself. ‘May God watch over you both on your journey.’ She wailed into his shoulder, and I had to suppress a laugh; that man was as far away from God as a human could possibly get. Not to even mention the absurd concept of the deity watching over a _demon_. Snake walked up to him last. He visibly found it difficult to look up from the ground.

‘I’m sorry about your snakes. And your friends.’ The mute man looked up just for a moment and mouthed silent words. _Good luck, Smile_. Master embraced him briefly, too.

That was the last we ever saw of them.

 

 

He had said he wanted to travel; not something I expected, since he often favoured staying inside, his weak health probably being one of the main reasons. Maybe it was the hyperawareness of death that clung to him stubbornly, constantly, with the knowledge that he had no trump cards left on hand and I was entitled to his life any time – maybe that’s what made him want to see as much of the world as he could, _while_ he could. How very, almost adorably _human_.

And so I humoured him, offering to take him wherever he wished at a moment’s notice. It’s not what he usually wanted, though; he claimed he wanted to feel the rattle of a carriage, the sway of a ship on the ocean, the rhythmic rocking of a train; an ordinary journey without royal orders, without obligation to do anything, without the need to be anywhere. And so that’s what we did. We visited many countries on every continent, without any purpose other than just to see and spend the time. Expectedly, we kept away from large tourist attractions and gatherings of people, often staying for several days or weeks in abandoned houses, castles, barns – once even a cave. He didn’t mind me using a bit of my ‘abilities’ to make the spaces a bit more liveable for him – there was no one around to see, anyway.

It was about two years into our travels that another _breakthrough_ took place.

We were in Germany at that time, in a small isolated house on the far outskirts of town that seemed like it belonged to some kind of poet long ago, if the amount of loose papers and manuscripts and inks were any indication. There was also a decent collection of books in one of the bedrooms, promising to be an enjoyable pastime for hours. As for my Master, he enjoyed learning to play the piano downstairs in the living room, sketching, or walking in the nearby woods – though I never let him wonder off alone. He asked me to teach him about plants that we came across; which berries were edible, or how to tell different kinds of trees apart by their leaves. They were unusual, unexpected questions but I indulged him anyway. He seemed to like that place, so we stayed there for a good while.

Summer was slowly coming to an end, but these months were much warmer here than in England, so that the late evenings still had a lingering heat to them. It was on one such evening that I was reading through the leftover unpublished manuscripts – it was an entertaining mental challenge, since the dialect was quite heavy. So absorbed was I that I did not notice a different kind of heat and heaviness spreading through the quiet inn. I didn’t even take note of my Master entering the room; not before he leaned over my shoulder.

‘Are they any good?’ He murmured casually. _Too_ casually.

‘I believe I’m not a fair judge of the arts, but some of the concepts are phrased in an interesting way, though the ideas themselves are far from original. Love and death and sex. You’ve all been writing about these pretty much ever since you learned how to put ideas on paper. It’s quite astonishing, really. I’m quite certain that in a thousand years’ time this will not have changed in the slightest.’

‘We’re boring like that, aren’t we.’ He didn’t sound as if he took offence. ‘Well, are you… nearly done with them, anyway?’

‘Why do you ask, my Lord? Is there something you require of me?’

‘I… Would you take me to bed?’

Looking back on that day, I can never suppress a laugh at my own stupidity – or perhaps I simply could never have expected his true intentions. ‘Are you feeling unwell?’ In that naïve mindset, in that moment, that was the only thing that made sense; it was too early for bed, and he never really asked for my help with getting ready for sleep anymore – hasn’t since a long time. When I looked back at him, his flaming cheeks only solidified my silly assumptions of his sudden ill-health.

‘N-no! I mean-’ He frowned, awkward and frustrated. ‘I mean… come to bed. With me.’

Oh.

_Oh.  
_

Centuries of existence and experience, and yet this one human could still surprise me. I turned around fully in my chair to face him and he very purposefully avoided my eyes, suddenly so very _meek_ and uncertain. The _‘if you want to’_ hung between us, unspoken but almost audible, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. What I knew was that I felt utterly stupid, unsure of how to proceed next – should I even take this seriously? Why _now_?

As I stood up, I didn’t miss the little twitch of his body as he held himself back, in the last moment, from taking a step back. I smelled genuine _fear_ in him – fear that I would hurt him? Reject him? His behaviour didn’t fit in with anything I was used to around him, but either way, he looked ready to shatter should I deny him; should I tell him I didn’t want it. He stood in my shadow by the desk as I spoke quietly. ‘Why so suddenly? Are you certain this is what you want?’ I didn’t speak of his previous abuse at the hands of the cultists or my own that one time, but I assumed he knew what I alluded to. He didn’t say anything, and his silence made it awkward for me to talk as well. I brought a hand to his face to test his reaction to my touch; he flinched but it seemed to be more of surprise than discomfort, as he relaxed soon enough. ‘Well then, I shall draw you a bath, Master. Please consider once more, so that you are completely sure.’ I left the room without waiting for an answer or saying anything else.

I didn’t understand him. I never really did, did I? The confusion sloshed in me like the water filling the tub. So to speak. He seemed apprehensive, so why did he ask for it? To an extent I expected him to change his mind.

He didn’t.

As he re-entered the mid-darkness of the bedroom, all warm and rosy from his bath and wrapped up in a grey bathrobe, I didn’t miss the way his eyes briefly lingered on the small cup of warmed-up oil and a folded damp towel on the nightstand that I’ve prepared. His cheeks were aflame when he walked up and stood between my legs as I sat on the bed, tightly clutching the fabric to himself. His reluctance to meet my eyes had me sighing. ‘I take it you didn’t change your mind?’ A little immaturely, he only shook his head weakly in response. ‘You’re not very convincing, young Master. It really does seem as if you’re forcing yourself, for whatever reason.’

‘It’s not that. I want to. I just… I’m nervous.’

He undid me with his honesty. I took his hands, pried them away from the edge of his robe and held them by his sides. Not forcefully; just guiding him to open up. I only let them go when his almost palpable need to shrink in and cover up had subsided; then I moved my hands up and down his arms, to his shoulders until he relaxed. It was like a slow, step-wise conversation, a dance. I pushed. He gave in. I pushed more.

‘I’m a demon.’ He twitched. ‘But you should know that I won’t hurt you.’ _Especially not like this_ , I thought but didn’t say it, supposing that he might have understood. _Not like this, not after what was done to you_. I was perfectly aware that should I take advantage of the control he was giving me, I would have broken any and all _trust_ and _bond_ that had formed between us slowly with time. ‘How far do you want to take this?’

A soft sigh left his lips as my fingers finally brushed over the warm skin of his shoulders underneath the robe. ‘You told me once that you’d- That you’d _show_ me. Show me now.’

I pulled him into my chest into some kind of an embrace, just because he looked so very _volatile_ , for a lack of better word. Goosebumps rose on his skin as I slowly undressed him, folding the robe in half and dropping it to the floor. ‘As you wish.’

With a wordless nod he gave over control. Made me take the lead. I didn’t mind. Actually, the amount of things I minded seemed to grow less and less when it came to him – but that was a thought for another time. I covered his body with slow caresses and kisses – never his mouth, remembering his limitation the last time – and he squirmed at first, not used to such gentle affections. Before he began to melt. We flowed like honey, smooth and slow and sickly-sweet until I had him spread on the soft sheets. But he insisted on laying on his front – yet another thing that came unexpected. I decided to not dwell on it either, concluding that it was easier to open him up in that position.

With lots of patience and lubrication he took first two of my fingers easily, managing to not tense up too much. But the second I momentarily withdrew them, panic bubbled up within him uncontrollably, spilling out in rapid whined gasps. ‘W-wait… wait, wait, wait, not yet, not- It still h-hurts, not yet, Seba-’

‘My Lord, do not fret.’ His violent terror made me wince. A kiss to one shoulder and a caress of the other hardly helped to calm him down. ‘I’m only taking more oil. There’s nothing to fear; it won’t be anything like _that_ time.’  He jolted when my digits found their way back inside him, but when it came to him that it was _just_ my fingers, he practically _deflated_ with relief. Somehow it stung to think how he cried _for_ pain previously, and now he shook with the fear of it. ‘However, if you still find the pain intolerable, we can stop. I won’t force you.’

It was obvious. And yet somehow it felt as if that needed to be said; necessary to assure him that I was not, in fact, a depraved being without any control over my carnal urges whatsoever – that, if one could say that while being a demon, patience was a virtue of mine. That communication was essential in order for both parties to enjoy the intercourse. Instead, there was an impression I had that I couldn’t shake off; an impression that… he initiated something, but then handed himself over to me and let me take the reins completely. As if he made himself available and _open_ for me to take pleasure from – or whatever else it was that I might have wanted to do – while not expecting any of it for himself. It was an improvement from the last time when he actively begged for torture, but barely. It was infuriating, and slightly insulting in a way, too. I knew how to bring pleasure, and I wasn’t a barbarian to think of only mine. _Especially not with you, little Master_. Yet another layer to add to my confusion. _Why did you do it_?

But he shook his head, so I carried on. When he was ready, and only then, I entered him with the utmost care and gentleness a hellish creation was capable of mustering. It wasn’t enough. I couldn’t see his face. _It was maddening_. He shut me out, only shaking almost silently on his hands and knees. _Did visions of your abusers plague you at that moment, Lord?_ I had half a mind to stop, but he wasn’t in pain – more than that; I could smell his pleasure, taste a hint of it in his sweat, but it was nowhere near the all-encompassing ecstasy I wanted to give him. Foolishly, I tried different things and touches, hoping it would make a difference. The only thing it did was made him whimper when I moved faster, and I slowed down immediately with an apology. I tried to coax some words out of him, tried to make him tell me what he felt, what he liked, since trying to read him was so unbearably difficult – but he only gave me brief responses and single-worded answers. Though he was mostly quiet, every now and again I managed to draw a soft whine out of him with my hand; when they became more frequent, I knew he was close. He came in my palm with a shudder and a choked grunt that barely made it past his clenched teeth. I couldn’t suppress a low growl of my own when I brought my fingers to my lips, covered with his pearly-white essence. That elating flavour of his soul and his tight warmth clenching around me brought me to my own release deep inside his soft body.

When I turned him over his breath was soft and slow and steady, his eyes half-lidded, and his face rosy with a mixture of bliss and calm. He looked _divine_. I could only hope and wish that, should we ever do this again, he would let me in at some stage so that I could show him _real_ pleasure, and watch him lose himself in it.  

‘Did you like it, Sebastian?’ The question caught me slightly off-guard with how _hopeful_ it sounded.

‘I did.’ I told him quietly. ‘Did you?’

At that moment, I hated my abilities; I hated that I could notice the almost perfectly-hidden surprise on his face at my question. My human insides seemed to twist painfully in on themselves. ‘I did.’

No more words were spoken as I cleaned his skin with the damp towel. By the time I brought the covers to his chin and tucked him in comfortably, he had already dozed off. Since it was only late afternoon, I left him alone to sleep as I went to prepare a light meal for the evening.

Fatal mistake.

It happened just a few heartbeats after his presence strengthened and he woke up. Then, the onset of that _one particular emotion_ was so sudden and so fierce and so strong that initially I had no idea what was happening; the smell of it made me gag even as I stood in the kitchen. Dropping the knife I held and acting on pure instinct – _young Master’s life might be in danger_ – I ran to his room. I got there in a split of a second and stood in the doorway, watching the man curled up underneath the duvet. He was fine. Nothing physical came to attack him. It was a demon that came to haunt him; one that never really left him for long.

_Loneliness_.

I walked up to his bed, keeping my footsteps audible to let him know I was there. He was on his side with his back to me and was the first one to speak up. ‘You left.’ Ah, that never really changed, did it? The one, single human being that could always leave me utterly confused with one or two whispered words. ‘You just f-fucked me, and left.’

He sounded so very _hurt_. I didn’t know what to say. ‘Young M-’

‘No, don’t say anything! I know. I know.’ The pillow rustled softly as he squeezed it in his fist. ‘I’m just a meal, I know. It doesn’t m- I don’t know what I was thi- Why are you even here?! G-go back to whatever you were doing.’

_Only you could make me uncomfortable in that human skin I wore, without even understanding_ why _._ ‘Can you just let-’

‘No, n-no. I don’t want to know.’

He was being so impossibly, incomprehensibly difficult. I sat on the edge of his bed with a sigh. ‘I left because-’ Why did it matter so much? Why did I have to be so very careful about what words I should use? I couldn’t grasp any of it. ‘Because I didn’t expect that you might have wanted me to stay.’ His lack of reaction was something very much anticipated. Silence settled over us for a long while until I came up with something to say. ‘Would you like me to stay?’

I didn’t expect that the solution could be so simple; it was a fleeting, momentary thought that I didn’t think would work – especially not when he was apparently so upset with me – so my astonishment was immense when I heard the quietest ‘ _yes’_.

But as always, my Master was cruel – only a single word to guide me. Did he want me to stand in the shadows by the door, like I did when I were to ward off his nightmares, should I lay back in bed with him, or should I stay where I was? Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered so much, were he not so volatile and upset at the moment, clearly prone to hurt and lashing out. Taking a risk, I settled myself behind him on the bed atop the covers and – slightly awkward and uncertain – wrapped my arm around his shoulders, hoping it would make him feel safer. Less lonely.

It must have, because soon enough he drifted back into peaceful slumber.

 

 

We stayed in the old house for another few weeks. In that time, my Master began to approach me about sex more frequently, but it would always be the same. He would always keep his face and his gasps hidden from me, would always shut me out. He wouldn’t let me in; never completely. The barriers he put around himself never wavered. And, as bizarre and illogical as it was, his feeling of alienation only grew at those times. The gentler I was with my caress, the greater the loneliness that dragged him down; the closer I held him to my chest, the more isolated he felt. Strangely enough, when it was me who initiated intimacy one time, the taste of that agony in him lessened; but it was always there. Completely irrational – we were connected as closely as two human bodies could be; so why did he feel this way? Not to mention that the nightmares returned a few times, making him whine out my name in his sleep. When cruelty and curiosity got the best of me I would let him suffer for a while longer before waking him up, hoping that I’d get to find out what atrocities I must have been inflicting upon him in those night visions. I never did.

The most recent development was managing to get him to lay on his back at least when I prepared him, assuming it would make things better. It made them worse, and I felt I had no choice but to confront him about it. ‘Young Master, you _must_ tell me… Why is it that every time we’re like this you hurt more? You seek it out, but when you get it, melancholy hangs over you like smoke. Enlighten me.’

He met my eyes just for a brief moment before looking away again. Opening and closing his mouth over and over, he seemed as if he genuinely wanted to answer but couldn’t find the right words. I gave him time. I was patient, and it paid off. In theory, anyway, because his answer left me even more confused than I was before. ‘Because I know you don’t want me.’

‘Because I wh-?’ I barely caught myself from idiotically repeating his words. He surely wasn’t serious. We both knew I killed humans, angels, and demons alike in the name of his soul, and that I would kill ten times more without a second thought should he ask this of me. He knew I _craved_ it. How was this relevant, anyway? ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I know. Because you’re not human.’ He gave me the saddest but an understanding smile, and it dawned on me then that this small insignificant human was capable of more comprehension than a timeless being like me. Or maybe he was just insane.

‘But I want you to feel pleasure, not discomfort like like this.’

‘Why?’

There was nothing I wanted more at that moment than for this conversation to end. I didn’t know anything. Was he confused? That made two of us. Indeed, why did I care? When exactly and why did his well-being and not only his life become important to me? Something between us solidified, tightened over time and left us both surprised. ‘Just… tell me how to make it better, young Master.’

‘I’m… not sure, but- Maybe you could, if you’d want to- Could you kiss me?’

My mouth was on his before he had a chance to take a breath. Before he had a chance to change his mind, because I simply _would not have had_ _it_. Only the Creator and the Devil themselves must have been capable of comprehending just how much and for how long I’ve been wanting – _craving_ – to taste those pale lips of his, how long I’ve kept these thoughts dormant to the point of almost forgetting them. My eagerness must have startled him for a moment, but he quickly melted under my touch. It was difficult to take it slow, even though I prided myself on my patience, but the last thing I wanted was to scare him. I wanted him to adjust; I could smell he was overwhelmed, but the sensation didn’t seem to budge even though it was only a chaste, close-mouthed kiss. His timid hand on my upper arm wasn’t helping my self-control. I traced his mouth with my tongue, coaxing it to open. His hand tightening in my shirt was the sweetest prelude to his lips finally parting; when they did, my tongue wasted no time in slipping inside to meet with his own.

Oh, how he _burned_.

The connection set his mind and body ablaze. He shuddered and he gasped and he whined, pressing his body into mine and pulling me down so that I covered all of him. His tongue slid over mine with a frenzied and frantic urgency of a drowning man; now it was my turn to be surprised by his enthusiasm. He was a wildfire; he burned so hot and so violent so that the flames enveloped me, too. I joyously let them, wanting to be scorched by him and turn to ash with him. I finally found him. Dug and clawed through his barriers and at last laid him out truly bare, only for me to see.

I no longer held back; wasn’t even sure I would have been able to had I tried. Pressing into his body, I only gave him brief rare moments to regain his breath after I stole it, busying myself with tasting the sweat on his neck as he gasped for air before seeking my mouth for more. The violet light in his right eye was blinding with its beauty. Then, ridding me of my shirt seemed to become crucial to him as he fervently started to unbutton it. I sat up to take it off and discard it quickly but he latched onto my shoulders and sat up with me. Clothing once again forgotten, he sat in my lap, wrapping his legs around me, and continued to kiss me with the kind of passion that could only have been compared to his old desire for revenge – though even that seemed to be dim in comparison.

‘A-ah! T-touch me, Sebastian. Touch me, touch me…’ He cried brokenly in the sporadic moments when our mouths detached, begging as if my hands weren’t all over his burning body. He was like a man possessed; I could barely hold onto a coherent thought myself. ‘G-God, please- Touch me!’ _Yes, call me your God; no other power – divine or devilish – will call you as their own. You’re all mine; mind, body, and soul_.

He keened into my mouth, growing more desperate by the second. Never enough. Not close enough. Though he did not make it easy I managed to free myself from my garments. It felt like it was the first time I was completely nude in front of my Master. He pressed himself once more into me, wrapping all his limbs around me, the sensation of our exposed bodies touching making both of us groan. He was like a furnace. Underneath all the smell of _want_ and _desire_ and _arousal_ , I could barely make out his frustration; pressed so close, he couldn’t kiss me. Teeth dug into my shoulder until it bled, and I revelled at the blissful pain he gave me, despite the fact that I could barely feel it. I dug my hand in his hair, shaking as I held back the urge to pull, to rip apart, to tear out the soul that now burned hotter than the sun itself. I wanted him, _hungered_ for him, in every physical and non-physical sense – I wanted to possess him and him to possess _me_. ‘Young Master…’ Sanity was slipping for my grasp. ‘ _Ciel_.’

He cried shakily into my neck, trembling all over. ‘T-take me, Sebastian, take me. Possess me. _Take me_.’

I complied not out of obligation, but out of our mutual mindless need for _more_. His soft, desperate whines and my impatient growls were shared between our joined mouths as I prepared him. When I finally pushed into his body, we both fell silent at the white-hot indescribable pleasure. Only a moment – that’s all it took before he _begged_ me to move, his body desperate for friction. I couldn’t deny him or myself and set up a steady rhythm of deep thrusts. We kissed feverishly again as I moved, covering his body with my own, pressed close as I leaned over him on my elbows. Our chests moulded together and brushed by each other with every stroke, and he wrapped his thin legs around my lower back and his arms around my neck. We became one body. I rejoiced in this unison, and in finally reaching his very core that he always kept hidden away from everyone. I was touching something much more _vital_ than just his bare skin – there was an ocean of emotions overflowing when the dam was broken and for once, for the very first time, they weren’t clouded with pain and loneliness. I didn’t dwell on why the proximity to my darkness was what brought him such elation, such sudden change of heart, such sudden release – I was certain I wouldn’t understand, anyway.

When he came it was with a broken but for once _unrestrained_ cry. He writhed, he danced so beautifully under my body, becoming the most ethereal piece of art that no artist would ever had the skill to capture. As he sang, I followed him, my climax taking over me before he even fully rode out his. It left us both panting – even my own body fought for breath that it didn’t really need but simply got used to over those years. As we were both coming down from our shared high, forehead to forehead, I watched him intently – looked for anything in his face and in his smell that wasn’t complete bliss and pleasure and release. With wariness, I waited for the melancholy and loneliness that always showed its ugly head. It didn’t come. There was a worry in his eyes when the clouds in them cleared, but I didn’t make the same mistake twice. I settled beside him on the soft bed with an arm around him, and content spread through him evenly and rapidly like ink in water. I suggested that I should clean him before he became sticky and uncomfortable, but he only clung to me tighter. He wouldn’t have it. With a mumble or something that might have sounded like _Later_ , he fell into a peaceful sleep.

In the following days we no longer had to verbally seek each other out; when evenings came, a brief but meaningful touch was enough, and we were intimate almost every other night. I never left him again. It continued until it became a routine, until I came to him every night; some nights for sex, sometimes just to hold him, and with soft surprise somewhat borderline on amusement I noted that I didn’t mind which it was – either one pleased him, and it pleased me too. I began to spend entire nights in his bed, sometimes even indulging in sleep. _His_ bed became _our_ bed. The loneliness of the scale as during our first nights never plagued him again. Nightmares continued to decrease in frequency, until they became sporadic occurrences.

Some time later we moved on from that place and continued our travels to eastern countries of Europe. We’ve stayed in countless different places, but thing that remained constant was the moon continuing to watch us become one every night.

 

 

Weeks turned to months, and months turned to years. I watched my Master grow up. I watched that youthful – _childish_ , one could say – anger and ferocity and desire for revenge slowly seep out and dissipate. I watched him become gentler, softer around the edges; how ironic – didn’t humans turn the opposite with age? Perhaps it was the travels that taught him how to appreciate the small, quiet things and somehow, I picked up that skill along with him. The afternoon sun often found us sitting by the banks of the Vistula and then the Volga river, watching the ripples reflect the warm rays, or the little fish scurry underneath the surface. For hours, in silence. I’ve seen all of this countless times, but in these moments I viewed things in a different light; allowed myself to ponder on the mechanisms and designs of this organic, rotting world. To a degree, there was a strange kind of beauty in the simplicity and the senselessness of the lives of these creatures; the banal aim to eat, swim, reproduce, and _survive_. Just survive. Every creature in the water, on land, or in the skies, equipped with skill and body just for that one purpose. Survive. Were humans any different? Just because they were capable of coherent and conscious thought; when stripped down of all the pretences and high morals down to their instincts – was their sole purpose to just _survive_ , also? Was _my_ purpose the same? I didn’t know. I wasn’t a philosopher; my thoughts ran in on themselves, made no sense. I was a simple demon, cold and heartless and cruel.

I didn’t know what my Master thought, but he seemed at peace, though now and again he became a bit anxious. _You must be bored to death with me_ , he told me once, looking down with genuine guilt on his face. But when I explained to him that a demon’s attention span could not be compared to a human’s, and that I could spend a week continuously staring at a single blade of grass, he laughed softly and became at ease once more.

His inclinations to be among nature surprised me – he always hated the outdoors as a child – but when I watched him smile at the falling petals of cherry blossoms, or the feeling of tall grass tickling his arms in open fields, his peace and contentment was contagious and I felt warm, too. He was beautiful. From a fiery child he became a man full of wonder and thought; I watched him turn from calamity to calmness, and it left me breathless.

We spent his entire twenties travelling. Shortly before his thirty-first birthday I took him back to London, as per his request. Not all that much changed over those years as we took in the landscape from the bridge over the dirty Thames river. The same grey city. Same old. But I knew this place was much more than just dull buildings for him; that there was a particular and important reason as to why we were here.

He leaned over the railing, the mild wind rustling his hair, falling in his face, expression full of thought. There was something significant he had to tell me, but it took him a long time to work up the courage to speak. He didn’t even face me. ‘Wouldn’t you say that… this is enough? That this is where it should end?’ My silence prompted him to continue, though reluctantly. ‘There’s no other… entertainment that I have for you. I have nothing else to offer you to keep you. This went on for long enough, didn’t it?’

Ah, so my gut feeling had been correct. _You wanted to make your home your dying place, didn’t you? How sentimental. But how fitting at the same time._ But that wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. Not now. Not in the nearest future. Perhaps not ever, and I wondered why.

Walking up to stand beside him and leaning my elbows on the railing too, I sighed and gazed up at the darkening evening sky. ‘Do you really wish to die that much, my Lord?’

With the corner of my eye I could see his own face turned towards the water flowing lazily below us. ‘I… I don’t know. But I also don’t understand what you’re doing, I…’ He shook his head, looking so helpless. ‘I’m not certain of anything anymore. I feel… lost. I don’t understand any of it.’

‘To be truthful, neither do I.’

That made him look up. ‘What do you mean?’

As usual, I avoided the answer. ‘Where would you like to go next, Master?’

He didn’t push. ‘I’ve seen all the places I wanted to see. That’s why I…’

‘Why not settle down somewhere?’

 

 

He was more than taken aback by the idea – apparently, he had fully prepared himself to die that very afternoon, on that very bridge, and not planned ahead. So we stayed in London for a few days – never returning to his old home – so that he could make up his mind. When he did, his sentiment clearly shone through. We moved away from England but not too far; he chose Ireland – the poor green island with many regions struck by famine. We settled on the outskirts of a small town by the Boyne river, not too far from Dublin. The old money that still lined some of his pockets was enough to buy a small two-storey flat with an empty area on the ground floor and living quarters and small kitchen upstairs. We set it up together, and even I had to admit it was pleasant. _Cosy_. Homely, and very human.

The bedroom and the bed were never _his_ – they were _ours_ from day one. Though so many things have changed, our bodies moving together under the cover of the night was something that remained constant. This elating, agonising intimacy kept me sated and yet it made me hungry for more – a perfect paradox like my little Master himself. Though by human standards he wasn’t so _little_ anymore. He was a man in his prime age, although his petite figure always reminded me of the tiny child that he was.

‘You’ve grown so much.’ The words came out on their own one evening as we laid in our post-coital bliss.

‘Did you just realise that now because I topped last week?’ He glanced at me with a smirk.

I huffed a small laugh. ‘Perhaps that did contribute.’

He laughed also and settled back against the pillows. He spoke after another while of silence. ‘Does it bother you?’

‘What exactly, young Master?’

‘That I’m not really a _young Master_ anymore. Not a cute kid. I’m old, getting older all the time… I look older than your human form does now.’

Though he sounded as if he was trying to be casual about it, his words were still odd. Was this something he was genuinely self-conscious about? ‘It is human nature to age, my _little Lord_. Besides, you’re just entering your thirties; you know that is not old. If it were, what does that make _me_?’

‘But does it bother you?’ He just wouldn’t let it go, would he?

‘Not in the slightest.’ I sighed heavily– he said nothing else, apparently believing my words. I could not lie, after all. He seemed to believe me, but was not convinced. Rolling over to lean into his neck, I spoke to him quietly. ‘You should know better than to think that demons are as shallow as humans and are only attracted to physical beauty.’ I felt him shudder underneath me as I teased him _just a little_ with my tongue on the shell of his ear. Just to deliver my point better, that’s all. ‘However, if that _were_ the case, and had I no self-control… I would never let you out of this bed, my Lord.’

Pulling me in for a kiss he wrapped himself around me and let me take him all over again for the second time that night. I assumed I managed to convince him.

But I was a demon, so I didn’t tell him everything. I praised him no more for his beauty – didn’t tell him that he grew to look so much like his father, but so much more striking and gentler and warmer than the man was in the photographs. I supposed it was somewhat of a shameful thing for me to have softened so much. I came to crave him and care for him to an extent that was, frankly, quite _unsightly_ for a hell’s creature. He sometimes said that I held him as if he was something holy – but was that not the case? Was he not my very own salvation; the only light that I would ever be entitled to? There was a sacredness, a divinity inside him, but it didn’t burn my wicked tongue – it welcomed me and accepted me in its warmth. The little mortal man became my God. And I worshipped him. Body, heart, and soul.

He never took a wife, neither did he ever invite a woman to his – _our_? – bed despite countless fair maidens always throwing themselves at him. I wasn’t certain whether this surprised me or not – I realised I never gave it any thought; never expected him to actually grow up to be a man of marriageable age. Quite certainly he didn’t expect that either. But really, it was very much like him – it only made sense for him to lead a lonesome life with only black-clad death at his side. It was difficult to imagine his pain-hardened heart scarred by loss and grief opening up to love a woman or hold a weeping infant to his chest – especially when he cried with such passion and beauty in my arms behind closed doors. No, marriage wouldn’t have suited him; he always turned his back to the light, almost with stubbornness, as if it burned him – why should this be any different? Would I let him take a wife anyway? He was mine just as I was his, and demons aren’t renowned for sharing. Not that it mattered; he spared me from having to make that choice, rejecting woman after woman, telling them his heart was no longer open. When he would cling to me later at night, I sometimes dared to entertain the question whether the reason for that was Lady Elizabeth’s death, or me.

 

Though he hasn’t played in years he decided to take up a job as a violinist in a theatre in the city – something that was completely unnecessary, and something that I actively objected to due to the increased frequency of his asthma attacks. It came as yet another surprise; Ciel Phantomhive working as a part of a team? In _arts_ , none the less? But he was determined. Maybe he just wanted to do something, and the violin reminded him of his old life. Maybe he missed it. His eyes certainly did light up when he was given a violin to test his skill – I got to see it as I stuck around as his ‘cousin’ with the job of keeping an eye on him due to his poor health. The latter part was true, for certain. Upon receiving the instrument, the first thing he played was a melancholic tune that I had always taken a liking to myself – the tune I hummed to him as I bathed him after bringing him back from the cultists for the second time. He got the job in the dusty dark theatre without question.

In little time they did in fact find out that my Master was not a naturally-born _team player,_ and he was far from comfortable on stage; even as a grown-up man he was reserved and shy of people, standing in the shadows. He was quiet, letting his violin speak for him, just as the serpents used to be his footman’s voice. But they kept him though because of the way his music _gripped the soul_ , they said. And it was true. Many a time did he tug at the gentle souls of women and made them sniffle into their handkerchiefs with his music that was far from perfect in skill, but overflowing with emotion that only a human could produce, only for other mortals to understand. During his solos all eyes were turned to the thin man in the corner, but _my_ eyes never left him as I sat in the audience during every performance and every practise. Sometimes when he opened that big blue eye of his he looked straight into mine, making me feel as if he always played just for me.

Two years. That’s as long as he was able to perform. The breathlessness, the asthma attacks, the _coughing_ – particularly on stage when nervous – made it impossible. It was disrupting the audience, the actors, the whole performance. So they ‘let him go’, as they carefully put it, wishing him a swift recovery and encouraging him to visit a doctor – as if I wasn’t dragging him to every physician in the country and abroad already. They all told him the same thing; his lungs were weakening due to a lifetime with asthma. He should take care of himself, avoid stress and any overly-strenuous physical activity. Meaning, they could do nothing for him.

 

His clock was ticking loudly.

 

He always listened to the prognosis with the acceptance of a man who lived with death on his shoulder all his life. Beyond age of thirty-five he never visited a doctor again.

In the meantime, he took up something else, but not something different or new entirely. Wanting since childhood to have his own toy store, he began to carve wooden dolls. They were terrible at first, of course. He had no idea how to go about it and cut his hands with the sharp tools endlessly. Once I even saw a glimpse of his old fire and impatience as he swung a half-finished doll across the room in annoyance at his failures. But the more books I brought him on the subject, the more he practised, the better he became. When his little creations began to take shapes he wanted, he started to paint them, too. Hours and hours, days and weeks and months were spent on perfecting his craft until he began to produce things that were sellable. I saw a little dismay in his face when he realised they weren’t actually dolls that _children_ would want; they looked melancholic, sad, and haunted, with somewhat of a gothic flavour to them – they were more likely to attract some passionate doll collectors.

He opened a shop in the downstairs area of our flat anyway and was mildly successful. The figurines didn’t bring a massive amount of income, but that was fine – he knew he didn’t have to worry about material matters as long as he had his demon by his side; it was more about giving him the satisfaction of creating something, doing something he always wanted to do, and to keep him occupied with something not physically demanding.

What he _had_ to worry about was his deteriorating health. That was not something I could possibly help him with; all I could do was watch my young Master slowly begin to wither away. It progressed gradually. He grew weaker slowly; sometimes he was painfully short of breath, and sometimes he happily went with me to the nearest food market. Two steps forward, one step back. Back and forth, but steadily in one direction overall.

He coughed and had to put in a lot of effort into blowing out the candles from the cake for his fortieth birthday – a small, silly sentiment that I insisted on every year. He smiled apologetically for taking such a long time. The following year’s cake had no candles on it.

 

_Tick, tock._

 

It was an autumn morning when I came back from the market that I was greeted with a putrid, acidic smell. When I ran to the bedroom, surely enough, I found the bed stripped of its sheets – now bunched up on the bare mattress – and my little Lord on his knees with his back to me, mopping up a small pinkish splatter on the floor by the bed. ‘Young Master, what happened? Are you alright?’ I saw him nod, but he never answered the first question. Though it didn’t really matter; it wasn’t hard to gather that his coughing fits were now severe enough to induce vomiting. Or perhaps he just felt nauseous. ‘Let me help-’

‘No, I’ll do it myself!’ His shout only made him shake with another cough.

So unreasonable. ‘But-’

‘No, get out! Go! It’s an _order_!’

The mark on my hand thrummed in warning, an almost forgotten sensation at this stage. When was the last time he ordered me explicitly? It didn’t matter; it shut me up. So _very_ irrational, but I let him have his way. I let him mop up the mess on the floor, let him wash the sheets himself, let him hang them up on the strings outside to dry, all the while pretending not to see how he struggled with it all. I didn’t hold it against him; I knew he was beyond embarrassed – the smell of his shame was worse to me than the contents of his stomach were to his human nose. The blood of a once-proud earl still ran in his veins, and being reduced to such a state was unbearable for him, I was certain. So I turned a blind eye to it, and we moved on from the incident as if nothing had happened.

Only that it happened again, this time downstairs in the shop, but fortunately after opening hours. Yet another coughing fit made him fall to his knees and vomit on the floor. A sob shook him. I stood there for a moment, letting myself mentally step back for just a second to try and imagine what he felt. What was it like? To have a coherent mind, intact and intelligent, but with the physical body falling apart about him? It must have been similar to the feeling of being held captive, restrained. Like the seal that bound me in the cultists’ basement. That, however, would not have killed me on its own. My young Master, however…

I knew he would deny my support again; I didn’t let him and got straight to the point. ‘There is nothing shameful in accepting help, young Master.’

He jolted as he fought for his breath back, and I knew I hit the nail on the head. ‘Se…bastian.’ I won. He gave in. He had no fight left.

There was utter exhaustion in his eyes as I helped him stand and leaned him against me. ‘Come now, little one.’ He didn’t protest when I led him upstairs, made him rinse out his mouth with water, and drink some hot herbal tea before putting him back to bed. I only left him to clean up the mess downstairs once he fell asleep.

 

_Tick, tock. Tick…_

 

Little by little, his body continued to deny him, stripping him of his independence bit by bit. The handkerchief he carried had to be washed more and more often to get rid of the blood that he coughed up. Most of his dolls laid unfinished on his work bench. Sex became less and less frequent, until it became too demanding and tiring and, ultimately, impossible. Something he apologized profusely about, and something that I tried to make him forget about by holding him in my arms throughout the nights in an innocent embrace. I helped him bathe. Helped him eat.

I also had a lot of time to think. I thought about how over those years our relationship evolved continuously, steadily growing in a certain direction. Naming it or speaking much of it was not something we engaged in; it was rather a challenge for both of us, I imagine, but in the silence of my own thoughts during the nights when he slept at my side, my mind sometimes wandered off in those directions. A mortal and his demon? An earl and his butler? That’s how we started but moved on from it long ago. He has always been my master and my ruler, but these days it didn’t seem like an accurate or a _sufficient_ description anymore. A violinist and his companion? A doll maker and his _lover_? How laughable. Isn’t it? And yet an outside observer, seeing us tangled in the bedsheets, would probably make such an assumption. Would he be right? I found it unsettling to not know the answer, to not understand; it meant weakness, and demons are not weak beings. So by the end of such musings, I’ve always found myself settling with one and the same answer; we were simply Ciel Phantomhive and Sebastian Michaelis, bound together by contract – and perhaps something more, though not understanding the ‘something’ continued to irk me, like a small stone in a shoe. Like always.

And like always, I helped him and took care of him in every way I could, until his final hour came.

 

_…Tock._

 

 

 

Now as we sit on the bed, his slight weak laughter is a haunting melody in the darkness of the small room as he teases without malice. ‘Is that sadness I see on your face? You’ve told me so many times that your kind does not experience emotions, did you not?’ I cannot answer him with any reasonable words; _my Lord_ , you know as well as I do that those years saw our companionship as more than that of a hell’s beast chained to its mortal charge – why must you taunt me so, wanting me to voice what we’ve treated with mostly silence all this time? ‘Sebastian… It’s way past my time.’ His delicate hand, now larger than the first time I held it through the cage bars but still as fragile and bony, reaches out to my face to brush that one strand of hair behind my ear. How odd for _him_ to attempt to comfort _me,_ with such a soft voice whispering almost reverently. ‘You’ve let me live for so long, my demon.’

‘Not long enough.’ I whisper back just as quietly, closing my eyes and leaning my cold cheek into his palm; desperate to feel his skin while it’s still warm with life, now that the all-too-real threat of losing it looms over me.

‘More than enough. Despite me breaching our contract, despite… my abandoned revenge. You’ve been by my side all these years, allowing me to experience things I never even hoped for. You let me grow up, you let me… feel _peace_ , for once. Contentment. Something I never knew I could feel again.’

I furrow my brow against the onslaught of ache and finality that his words bring. The swift years I’ve tried to drag out are coming to an even more rapid conclusion and I, with all my hellish power, am _powerless_ against it. There’s a question in-between his words; _why_? But after all the times he’d tried and got no meaningful verbalised reply, he doesn’t ask anymore; I can only hope he remembers the touches and the warmth with which I answered, unable to put my reasons into coherent words. ‘We can still wait a while.’ I take his hand in mine, kissing his palm as if I could coax cooperation out of him with such gentle affections. But I know it’s futile; he won’t be swayed – and yet, the awareness of this doesn’t stop me from trying.

‘No. We both know that my body is on the verge of falling apart. I’m… getting sicker by the hour, Sebastian. You already tend to me more than when I was a child; the last thing I want is for you to see me in an even worse state, completely bedridden, making you clean my own waste…’

He’s falling out of my grasp, like sand falling from between my fingers; his illness as merciless as gravity – a force of fate, a force of nature, that I just cannot stand up against. ‘You know I’d do anything you’d need of me.’ I’ve lost; I know exactly what his reply will be – the words are only a formality to confirm my dread.

‘I know.’ There’s a shy smile in his voice, and momentarily, I hate him; hate him for smiling in the face of death. For not begging me to spare his life for another precious while, to which I would joyfully oblige. ‘But don’t make me lose any more of my dignity.’ He pauses, then adds even more quietly, almost as an afterthought, almost uncertain. ‘Ugly and decayed by illness is not what I want you to remember me as.’

My proud, _human_ little Master; how cruel your Creator was to burden your kind with such fragility of the flesh, such susceptibility to damage and disease. But alas, a dignified death is not something I can deny you. ‘I understand, young Master.’

‘You never stopped with this whole ‘young master’ business, did you.’ He huffs a half-laughter that quickly turns into a vicious coughing fit, making my eyes finally open and turn to him, suddenly realising I have nothing but fleeting last moments with him; how dare I turn away and not look at him while I can, even though his face is burnt into my mind forever? Hunched over, he tries to hide the little droplets of blood in his palm, as if I haven’t seen him in such a state and worse. Silly human pride. Nevertheless, he accepts the handkerchief I offer him, his own one still drying since its last wash. ‘Even though now I’m technically older than your human form, I guess.’

‘I never stopped because this is what you’ve always been to me, my Lord.’ His physical maturity. His long-forgotten sapphire ring. His abandoned titles of Earl and Queen’s Watchdog. His luxurious manor and expensive robes left behind years ago. He grew and changed so much, and yet to me he has always been my little Phantomhive Master.

‘So very sentimental, Sebastian.’ Oh, why do you _insist_ on taunting me _still_ , my dear contractor, and render me without a reply? ‘Ah… I’m stalling, aren’t I. So… how does this need to be done? Do I need to do something? Can we… stay here? I’ve grown rather… _fond_ of this room, this bed.’

Hell or Heaven or anything in between, have mercy on my black, aching heart. It’s not just that he requests to take his last breaths in this bed – _our_ bed. It’s the notion itself of him asking in the first place. Not an order, but a quiet plea, a prayer to his devil.

‘Of course, Master. You needn’t do anything. Let me help you lay down.’ He doesn’t say anything when I re-fluff his large pillows and stack them for him to marginally recline on. I aid him in laying under the duvet, covering him to his waist, catching a glimpse of his striped pyjamas hanging hauntingly loosely around his overly bony, sickly-looking hips. ‘Would you like something to eat, young Master?’

A strained smirk spreads across those pale lips that I came to worship. ‘Last supper?’

_How dare you. How dare you, young Master; how dare you smile your death in the face. How dare you agree to it – no, insist on it. How dare you shatter me so with your acceptance – surely you’re aware of the intensity of my newfound pain?_ ‘You could say that.’

‘I… No, I think I’m fine. I don’t suspect I could stomach anything, anyway. Although-’

‘Yes?’

‘Could you make me some hot milk? With honey?’ My hands freeze atop his chest as I smooth out the covers; the perfect – but long since becoming unconvincing to both of us – façade of a cold, unfeeling beast that I clung onto, foolishly, creaks and chips away. ‘Sebas-?’

‘My apologies. At once, my Lord.’

I genuinely _escape_ to the small kitchen to fulfil his _oh so agonising_ request. And once more, I don’t understand. I’ve watched this scene as a – usually – passive bystander. Over and over again. The departure of a human soul, and the grief that drowned the ones surrounding the dying, like a black merciless sea. Never have I grasped the pain they felt, or why the one on the deathbed wasn’t suffering more; surely, it was only logical since they’re the ones setting off on a journey to the unknown, leaving behind everyone and everything they used to hold dear? Never have I imagined the notion that what’s worse than death is being left behind – my cold, selfish, self-preserving nature would not accept that. Until I began to feel. I can recognise that my mortal master’s death is causing me to feel _pain,_ but yet again, _infuriatingly_ so, I don’t understand. Why does the cup of milk – now shaking in my hand as I grip it forcefully – bring back such vivid memories from three decades ago, and why is it that this recollection causes such an aching _tug_ in my mind in the light of current events? _I don’t want him to die_. So what? How does it tie in with all these emotions? It’s as if I have all the elements of a puzzle but cannot piece them together to make sense of the situation as a whole. Could it be sadness, like he mentioned himself? I know the smell and taste of it, coming off from humans. Maybe if I’d bite through my skin and taste my own blood, I would know.

Abandoning my thoughts for a moment, I walk back silently before the drink turns lukewarm. ‘Here you go, young Master.’ I hand him the cup with the handle towards him so that he doesn’t burn his hands, while keeping an eye out for any tremors that could make him drop it. He safely takes a few sips. ‘Is it to your liking, my Lord?’

He lets out an appreciative hum. ‘You’ve always made it just right.’

His words do not get an answer from me. I stand there, silently, seeing no-one else but a young child, still battered and bruised and still traumatised by terrors experienced both in his sleep and waking hours. A little earl with a title too big for him, and not even rightfully his, but one which he had to grow up into – way too early – nonetheless. How ironic of him to ask this of me at such a time; something he always asked for to calm down when he woke up screaming and shaken by his haunted dreams so that he could sleep again.

_Am I putting you to sleep now, young Master, after your worst nightmare? The nightmare which lasted forty-three years?_ Oh, it would only make sense.

‘Is it raining outside?’

The question catches me off guard, unexpected. Still, I take a moment to focus on the sounds outside. ‘It would seem so, Master.’

‘Oh… Can you open the window? I want to listen to it…’ He says, wistfully. There’s an inkling of what I came to guess as a feeling of _hope_ in my mind; a brief foolish thought that maybe, just maybe, he will change his mind and will not want to part with the beauties of this mortal world just yet. I comply with this request as well, pulling back the heavy curtain. It’s almost night and the sky is the darkest, coldest gray, covered with seemingly infinite clouds that bring the heaviest of rains. It falls loudly against the pavement and the tree just outside our window, and a small gust of chilly wind brings a few droplets inside. ‘It’s… really pretty. Thank you.’

When I look back at him, the cup is empty, resting and held loosely on his lap. ‘Young Master…’ I silently take the porcelain from him. The one from his old home that he kept; the one that I repaired time and time again, piecing it together like I’ve done for his cherished ring once. As I put it on the nightstand, I try to ignore the ill, thin, middle-aged man as he sinks lower against his pillows. Just as if he’s getting ready for sleep; but this time he will never wake up again.

‘Sebastian.’ I’m reluctant to turn and face him again, but I can’t ignore his call. He fixes me with that same soft expression still; almost a smile. ‘This is it, then. At long last.’

Seating myself slowly at the edge of _our_ bed I try to distract myself with the smell of him. There is no sadness or grief in his soul; neither do I see any in his tired eyes. There is no anger, no regret. A little bit of fear, yes, but that’s more than understandable. Yet mostly, there’s peace and acceptance.

Neither of us say anything for a long while; we only look at each other, communicating without words. Still, I have the most odd urge to speak, and to hear his voice in return – while I still can. There’s a bizarre need to tell him, tell him _something_ , and yet I don’t even know what these things would be; it seems as if all our exchanges over the years weren’t enough; as if there are more things that I need to tell him, but I’ve almost ran out of time. It’s ridiculous, irrational, and so disgustingly human-like. _Oh, what have you done to me, my Master? What kind of wrecked, confusing state are you leaving me in?_

‘Would you like to fall asleep first, Lord, to ease the discomfort?’

‘No, I- no. We’ve agreed to that long ago, haven’t we?’

‘Indeed.’ A solemn _request_ uttered years ago; _don’t take me away unexpectedly or in my sleep_.

‘Will it hurt?’

‘It… depends. Mostly on how reluctant your soul will be to leave your body. And on how I do it.’

‘Oh. Well, naturally, don’t let me spoil your meal; you’ve waited more than long enough. Don’t hold yourself back on my account, you big softie.’ He tries to joke, but I don’t join him in his brief snicker. As the smile dies from his lips, his voice becomes quieter, almost distant. ‘It’s strange to see you so solemn; won’t you smile instead?’

‘Forgive my disobedience, my Lord. I find myself rather incapable of doing so, lest I lie right in your face.’ I look away momentarily, somewhat frustrated with myself that I can’t even grant his last wishes. ‘Master, is there anything that you want me to do afterwards?’

He seems to consider my words for a moment. ‘No. I don’t have any unfinished business with this life. I don’t have any regrets. I’m… at peace, Sebastian. I’m ready to go.’

The light visible only to my eyes – the shine of his soul – is almost blinding. This tattered, bitter soul, dragged through mud and sandpaper and back, and yet it remains so clear in its own way. This one little human, so weak, but so brave in the face of death. He opens his palm and I take it in my marked one, placing our intertwined hands on his chest as the finality of this moment finally settles on me heavily; a weight that even my demon shoulders buckle under. Taking a deep unnecessary breath in hopes that it would calm me as it sometimes calms humans, I slowly lean over his thin form, delicately brushing the disease-thinned hair away from his forehead. I rest my forearm by his head, subconsciously expecting him to push me away. But there’s only that maddening acceptance. No, more than that. _Trust_.

_What a fool you are, always been! You should have sought help from angels, begged for a divine intervention, looked for ways to exploit a non-existing loophole in our contract! But no, you preferred to spend your life as the main meal at a demon’s dinner table, to place your trust in the dark abyss of its sin. My perfect, vexing Master; I do not understand._

‘Yes, my Lord.’

Closing the small space between our faces and laying my mouth to his, I keep my eyes open as his close half-way; I feel an almost desperate need to watch his still life-filled eyes before all the sand grains fall out of my grasp completely, like in a sand clock. For a timeless while I only kiss him chastely, coaxing him to relax. His cold lips follow mine blindly in a slow, final dance. Then, finally, I breathe him in.

The moment I start to pull out his breath from him, his soul latches on – instinctively unwilling to leave, after all. My own left hand burns as the black mark sizzles. I keep breathing in his essence slowly but firmly, but it doesn’t give. A piece of it tears off but I barely taste it as the fragile creature beneath me jolts with pain, squeezing my hand and giving a small, choked, fearful whimper. ‘Shh, my Prince.’ I whisper against his mouth, feeling as if I’m bleeding all over. ‘Don’t resist. It will hurt less.’

He nods as much as our proximity allows and takes a few steadying breaths himself. He’s still skittish and wary when our lips touch again, but I don’t attempt to take him again; not before the sudden surge of fear in the air subsides. I breathe in slowly, softly; his soul still holds on, but not as fast. Little by little, his hand goes weaker and weaker in my grip, and I’m too preoccupied with forcing myself to remain gentle to properly savour his taste. I don’t get to take too much of him in before he twitches and whines underneath me again, and I take it as a cue to slow down further. But he doesn’t stop. Eyes wide in shock, I realise he’s _struggling_. He’s fighting back. No, he’s trying to _speak_.

I pull away immediately, with last hopes that the pain scared him. That he changed his mind. ‘My Lord?’ For the briefest moment I look away from his face to glance at his hand, trembling with the effort of squeezing mine. By the time I gaze back into his eyes, he had shattered. Tears run in small rivulets out the corners of his eyes and behind his ears, his eyebrows are pulled together, and his bottom lip trembles, almost unnoticeably. ‘ _Ciel_?’

His beautiful eyes close momentarily as more tears come. He reopens them, blinking out his tears and calling out breathlessly. ‘S-Seba-Se-’

‘Yes?’

‘O-one thing… Do one thing for me, a-after all. Please.’

‘Anything you ask.’

I can only helplessly watch him break further and shake with a broken sob. ‘Don’t… Don’t forget me.’

Something dark swirls in my vision and I shut my eyes against it, and against the excruciating tide of whatever emotion it is that crashes into me and shatters the charred blackened _thing_ I call a heart. ‘Never. I’ll remember every moment until my own dying hour. And when it is my time to cease to exist also, I’ll meet you in the dark nothingness where we will dance together again.’

Reluctantly, I lift my gaze up back to him and _oh_ , he’s smiling now; even though it’s a smile stained with tears. ‘I’ll see you there, then.’ My vision still swirls black, and once more I just don’t understand until a thin hand reaches for my eyes and comes away with ink-covered fingertips.

I’ve never cried; I definitely would have remembered and made the odd observation of my inability to cry like a human despite having taken the form of one – the liquid soot runs down my human face slowly, like thick oil. I’ve never cried – so what changed now? Have I spent too much time blending in with those creatures? Was it over thirty consecutive years that fooled this body that a human soul inhabited it? Has this been enough for the ways of these mortal weaklings to rub off on me? Has this one human soul changed _that_ much in me? What a senseless, rhetorical question. He changed everything.

‘Those tears of yours…’ He starts weakly, hoarsely. ‘All those answers you never gave me, they- they explain everything, now. You’ve… Finally told me.’ And still, I can only watch as he sinks slowly, deeper and deeper under, until his words are no more than a quiet breath. ‘Thank you, Sebastian.’

Wiping away his tears so pointlessly, I squeeze his hand tighter and whisper reverently against his lips. ‘Rest well now, my little King.’

There is no resistance this time; he gives in and goes willingly.

Ciel Phantomhive’s soul tastes like everything I expected, and completely different; it’s an unexplainable potion of paradoxes that I’ve always worshipped in him; darkness and light, filth and purity. When I focus; I can pick out some of the individual raw emotions and feelings that wedged themselves permanently into his very core; the ever-present pain and hurt, the bitterness, the grief and sadness, the loneliness – somewhat less prominent than I had anticipated. I expected his soul to taste heavily of only that kind of swirling darkness, so the gentler, almost shy lighter flavours come as a surprise. They’re more difficult to distinguish since it’s been so long that I’ve tasted them, and more fragile since they’re not nearly as deep-rooted. But there are scarce bright sparks of something that feels like tranquillity, contentment… perhaps one single grain of joy? It’s rich but light on my tongue and in my human lungs; it feels like my own personal salvation that I’m not entitled to. Like the heavens I will never reach. The beauty of his soul is like that of field flowers; he’s not a bouquet of pompous, luxurious roses shielded from the world by glass in a royal garden – he’s a white-and-blue carpet of forget-me-nots and marguerites, blooming atop endless hills under the merciless sky; weathered and damaged, but nonetheless exquisite and breath-taking – raw, real, and honest.

His hand goes lax in mine just moments before his gaze becomes vacant as I swallow the last drop of his soul, but my lips still linger on his, absorbing the last of his warmth. The emptiness of the room is crushing as I continue to shed dark tears. Leaning back, I observe his hauntingly pale face with its peaceful, almost smiling expression and cheeks splattered with my black grief – almost as if hoping he could come back to life. But he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. What was taken cannot be returned. He’s so unnervingly still, his chest devoid of breath and heartbeat under my _clear_ left hand. I untangle it from his cold one to instead clasp his own two hands together and place it below his chest, as I’ve often seen humans do for their dead. Looking into his wet, shining eyes for the last time, I force myself to slide my palm over his eyelids to cover his once again perfectly blue and unmarred irises.

Time ceases to exist. I don’t abandon him. With my head in his lap, I continue to weep silently until I cry myself out; until there is nothing left of my human form except for liquid soot and crow feathers settled over the corpse, and I’m once more nothing but a nightmarish shadow lingering by his side. At some stage, I find myself wandering through lonely fields gathering flowers; an act of sentiment. The fragile plants decay instantly in my black claws until I learn to pick them slowly and gently. When I’m back, I cover my little Lord’s slowly decaying body with blue forget-me-nots, placing some between his clasped hands – the flowers seem fitting to the beauty of his soul, and to my promise in response to his last request; _don’t forget me_. I bring convallarias, too, with their gentleness, purity, and delicate fragrance, putting a few stems in the breast pocket of his pale striped pyjama shirt.

Initially, there are sporadic knocks coming from downstairs, at the doors of his doll shop, but they stop soon enough. I stay by him, talking to him, telling him stories in an inhuman voice. The flowers rot, and his body follows, but he’s as beautiful as he’s always been.

When he’s barely more than bones I wrap him in fresh sheets, carry him outside and lay him down on an altar of branches. The dry wood crackles and snaps in the silence of the night as the flames swallow up what’s left of my contractor, my mortal _companion_. When the fire dies out I swallow his ashes, too. Having consumed both his soul and body I’m full and sated, and yet completely hollow and empty.

The ashen gray morning brings with it a gentle shower, falling calmly in big heavy droplets from the cold, unfeeling heavens above; and as the nature rejoices in a quiet hum and hush and patter against the foliage, I know that I, until my own dying hour will always detest the sound of rain.

 

And I think I finally understand _why_.

**Author's Note:**

> Hold on, pls give me a second to stop crying *half-hour break*
> 
> Okay so I don't even know if it's even remotely sads-inducing to anyone but me or if it's just over-the-top, but after I wrote this short drabble (https://archiveofourown.org/works/13661112) I became obsessed with the need of expanding it, and soon enough I was staying up all night till 8am writing this stuff, uni work and other fics abandoned/delayed ._.'' (even though I can't even handle READING fics with major character death...) Honestly it's just the fact that I'm constantly sad over these two, constantly needing and hoping to see them confide in each other and to see some undeniable proof in the manga of their relationship having more depth than just business *cries more* Also, the final scene was a bit inspired by Naliquinra's little drabble (http://naliquinra.tumblr.com/post/170883666335/ check it out, it's beautiful)  
> So now this is finally done and I have poured my entire soul and heart out in this work, I can finally move on with life. Hopefully.  
> (I'm on tumblr at fishnnatu, if you wanna say hi ^-^)


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